She Gets 16 Pap Smears a Day So Medical Students Learn Gently
Molly Callahan, 30, works full-time as a gynecological teaching assistant in Queens, New York. She helps medical students practice pap smears without causing pain, at about $100 an hour, in a field with only around 40 workers in the tri-state area.
Molly Callahan, 30, a gynecological teaching assistant from Queens, New York, has 16 speculums inserted on her busiest days so that medical students learn to perform pap smears without causing pain.
Callahan works full-time as a gynecological teaching assistant (GTA). A GTA is a layperson who helps students practice pap smears and breast exams before they work with real patients.
She says the job is not as unpleasant as it sounds. "I don't ever really feel physically in pain even after the longest week of work," she said.
Callahan is also president of an international association for GTAs and MUTAs (male urogenital teaching associates). "If [your] reaction to my job is that it sounds like torture, I hope you feel scammed," she said.
She draws a line between the speculum exams and the pap smear itself, the collection of cells from the cervix. That part is "a little abrasive," she says, and she "definitely could not do 16 of those in a row."
Why women skip the test
Pap smears have reduced cervical cancer-related deaths by 86%, but many women avoid them. Reasons include confusion over guidelines, a lack of symptoms, and, most commonly, speculum discomfort and embarrassment.
One large study of US cancer statistics found that from 2005 to 2023, 32% of women aged 21-29 and 15% of women aged 30-65 had never had a pap smear.
Dr Kirsten Gardner, director of medical humanities at the University of Texas San Antonio, said early methods put innovation ahead of comfort. "It was never in the language [of]: 'How does a woman feel? Is this painful? What can we do about the pain?'" she said.
How the job works
Until the 1970s, pelvic exams and pap smears were historically performed on anesthetized patients. GTAs became more common then, in an effort to improve the ethics and educational quality of the exams.
GTAs give students real-time reactions and feedback. "They center the patient's voice," Gardner said.
More than 90% of medical schools in the US and Canada use GTAs. Callahan teaches at 30 universities and hospitals and earns almost $100 per hour.
She estimates there are only about 40 GTAs in the tri-state area, which has more than 15,000 medical students. Trainees need two months of training and a final test before they can teach the exam.
Callahan took up the work eight years ago, after her mother, an actor, director and producer, heard about it from a friend. At a class in Teaneck, New Jersey, she taught two labor and delivery nursing students from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
