Sports physical exam form incident

I think physical exam forms should be private. when i was 13 I had to get a sports physical at school for wrestling. I was uncircimcised, and the doctor wrote, 'uncircumcised genitalia, foreskin retracted w no phimosis, tanner stage 3' on the comments section next to the genitalia section.

the sports physical took place during normal school hours, and i was given a hall pass to go to the nurse's office. After the exam was complete, she handed me the form back, and told me to drop them off at the admin office before next week.

I dropped off the form during lunch hour at the admin office, and there was a female student assistant there who was in a senior class, and she was helping with paperwork and minor admin stuff for extra credit since she was ahead of the class for taking some placement exams.

she asked me if i need help, and i told her that i'm just here to drop off the form, and she said that she'll take it and file it with the rest. she took it, and flipped through it, making sure that it was signed, and she said, ok, we'll file it.

I was more than surprised when couple of days later when I was taking books out of the locker for next class, two girls came up to me and asked me if i really had an uncircumcised penis. i was dumbfounded, and ignored the question and walked away, but then i figured that the only person who could have seen the form was the assistant at the office. Then i remembered that the two girls sometimes hung out with the girl from the admin office. the girl obviously looked through the exam form and found out that i was uncut, and told her friends about it. The girls asked me the same question four different times on different days, and i finally said, 'no i don't', but then their reply was 'you are lying'

i told my counselor about the incident and told her that the assistant was looking through the exam form which is supposed to be private, and she said that she will talk to her. Apparently she talked to the student assistant, and she denied it, and after that the issue sort of went away, and there were no more questions from the girls.

Now looking back i would have wondered if it was reversed with a guy looking at a girl's examination form and babbling to other guys about the girl's development and whatnot. i think that would have been dealt with more seriously.

How embarrassing for you. You're probably right that if the genders were reversed, they would have done something about it. Personally, I think you should have offered to show the girls the part of your anatomy that they seemed to be fixated with. Maybe you could have made some sort of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" agreement with them. You may never know.

I feel bad for you! I hope you were not bothered by that situation. ...poor guy.

The basic problem is that they had a student with access to information which students are not allowed to have. This is not like turning in a library book for filing. An all too common problem when someone with complete knowledge doesn't think something all the way through. I have a problem, too, with someone having shown her what to look for, ie the signature.

Just out of curiosity - because of the flag indicating your location - was this in the US?

On other forums I've read about and discussed the experiences of European exchange students going to the US for a school year. Most Europeans, bar immigrants, are uncircumcised and that apparently piqued the interest of this one particular student's sports coach. The coach found occasions to 'have a look' and also to heartily recommend the student have his 'condition fixed' even going so far as to informing the school principle who in his turn also felt the need to lecture and urge the student to do something about his uncircumcised condition. The exchange student apparently told them all to go take a hike ... but considering the private nature of this information, you cannot really say that neither the coach or principle were anything but nosy busybodies at the least ...

This was in the US but I wasn't born there. I always wondered what would have happened if I took the girl's exam form and then teased about her periods and tanner staging. Probably would not have ended by just brushing the matter aside, like what happened with me

Agracier, I did have a similar incident where when I wrestled in high school, we had to go through a skin check. We were in our underpants in the locker room, and normally the underpants were not pulled down. The way the skin check worked was everyone lined up and went behind a small curtain and gave the examiner (in this case was female) the sports physical form that we had signed by the private pediatrician. For some reason, this pediatrician always commented that I was uncircumcised on the form, and this caught the attention of the female examiner. After I put my arms out to the side and examined my skin, she quickly pulled down the briefs and examined the genital area, and retracted the foreskin. This did not happen with other wrestlers as far as I know.

I am not sure why US doctors and nurses have such an weird obsession with examining foreskins.

When I lived in the US I used to go swimming at the local YMCA and back then nude swimming was mandatory. That meant that no one could hide their condition of circumcised or not and also resulted in no one commenting about it ... I do remember we were 3 or 4 uncircumcised out of about 80-100 but I never once heard a remark about it ... there were no girls of course, but sometimes it makes you wonder if nude swimming in general might not be a better idea as a norm instead of all the prudery and modesty that is becoming ever more prevalent ...

Imagine if you'd been swimming nude as a rule, then a remark such as you got from the girl would have been no big deal.

I am not sure why US doctors and nurses have such an weird obsession with examining foreskins.

Probably because until recently Americans were big believers in the preventive prophylaxis of circumcision against masturbation and STD's ... They don't see that many and that makes it somewhat fascinating I would think.

The universal draft that was voted during the Great War and then WWII and in the post-WWII era also gave military doctors great latitude in insisting and performing circumcisions on draftees - often against their will, in the belief that it improved battlefield hygiene (though one should note that all other combatant armies at the time consisted of mainly uncircumcised recruits and many gave the US a good run).

Aglazier.

I think your comment about nude swimming and comfort with our own bodies(I implied that) has merit.

In the United States the trend has obviously gone away from that as well as away from showering after swimming, sports practices and games.

As a coach I was a hold out on the showering thing. It only made sense to me that after you worked up a sweat that you showered to remove the bacteria. It was how I grew up and I really never gave the idea a second thought. I truly believe that those kids had a much better comfort level with their own bodies because they had a comparison basis.In 26 years as a coach I never had a kid refuse to shower and I found that the kids on the basketball team found it to be a right of passage.

Our world might be a little less tense if we reinstated nude swimming and showering after practices and games.

aglazier. I think your comment about nude swimming and comfort with our own bodies(I implied that) has merit. In the United States the trend has obviously gone away from that as well as away from showering after swimming, sports practices and games.

It's not only the US that is tending towards this attitude. In fact in many (west) European public swimming facilities, it is not all that unusual anymore to encounter female only segregated hours of admittance. The same applies to swimming classes in many schools where swimming used to be mixed as a matter of course.

The segregation in public swimming is hardly universal of course, but the trend is towards a larger number of facilities changing their practices to accommodate the prudish and strident demands of immigrant communities. And once started, it becomes a slippery slope or domino theory. And not only that, it also affects the community in general once such segregation becomes an accepted practice. More and more people then end up adopting the more prudish and outdated attitude and before you know it, us older folks are telling tales of how different things were when we were young and younger people don't really believe it or think we are exaggerating or believing our fantasies as fact ...

I would have been totally embarrassed for other students to know that my penis was uncircumcised. This is so rare in the U.S. that some men find it embarrassing, especially teens who are looking to fit in.

In high school whenever after our yearly physical the form was turned in to the school records office. As the name suggests they handled all the records: attendance, late passes and also the physical forms. It was always a bit weird for me to turn in my physical form there since the woman running the office was the mother of a friend of mine. And my forms from the pediatrician, like yours, were fairly detailed. It marked tanner stage for pubic hair and testicular growth, and whether the penis was cirucmcised or not.

Referring back to the original post, there are certainly a lot of embarrassing details on a record card.

As I have documented elsewhere, I had regular exams to do with my sexual development and a tight foreskin. There were inevitably copious notes and probably even photographs contained in my record file. Whilst I often saw the actual file on the desk, I never saw the the contents in any detail.

When applying for part time jobs and for college places, the application form asked for details of any current medication or ongoing treatments. I was too embarrassed to write the truth so left it blank, but was always worried when at the end of the form I had to tick a box to allow the college / employer to obtain details of my medical records if they required.

I was always worried that I would go to the interview, see my file on the desk and be quizzed about details of my condition and treatment, and why I hadn't declared it.

I grew up during the time when every boy that I saw in a locker room or anywhere else undressed was circumcised. I didn't even know that there was an alternative until much later when I was in a college locker room and saw a uncircumcised guy coming out of the shower and wondered what was up with that. If there was a place on a sports physical exam form to mark uncircumcised, I didn't notice it. But we usually didn't carry the form around that long or get a copy after the physicals. Our forms were more like check mark forms where something was marked as examined but I was lucky not to have any written comments made on anything. Just check marks on each part of the exam. I guess that some boys had hernias because there would be no reason to check for those if they didn't happen in childhood but I never did. The girls in my school knew that the boys had their genitals checked so no form was needed for them to see in the school office.

I would have been totally embarrassed for other students to know that my penis was uncircumcised. This is so rare in the U.S. that some men find it embarrassing, especially teens who are looking to fit in.

I know how you feel, but from entirely the other direction. My penis is circumcised but I was brought up in the UK where circumcision is rare. The stats are supposed to be 1 in 20 in the UK, yet I was the only boy circumcised in my class of about 25, and apparently the only boy circumcised in the whole year (of about 80 boys). It made me feel freaky and doubly nude compared to anyone else in the showers. After all, for my classmates in the UK, the only time their glans was visible was in very private sexual moments of masturbation, and at all other times this most intimate part of their penis was safely covered over by an innocuous skin just like everyone else’s.

I hope you didn’t endure the sort of intense humiliation I suffered at school from the many compulsory group nude showers. Or the sort of bullying I suffered of being publicly stripped and pinned down in the schoolyard so classmates could examine the effects of applying stinging nettles to my exposed glans (and balls) – the humiliation being almost as painful as the red swellings on my penis head (and anal area) from an allergic toxic reaction to the sting.

As an adult I now live in Australia (where circumcision is more like 1 in 4). I still feel an adrenalin rush when going nude in front of others, but unlike my childhood issues, I now enjoy getting off on the adrenalin as a form of exhibitionism I suppose.

I am circumcised and had collective showers at school. I think we were three in the class with a circumcision, I had a tight one, the others a loose one. It has never been a problem. Only once did a classmate recount how the surgery was done and said me that I was also circumcised. I had nothing to say about the operation since I was too young to remember. No school doctor made any comment about this.

I think in the US, circumcision is on a gradual decline. I've also noticed many more uncircumcised penises in porn than there were 20-30 years ago. As a bisexual male I find the natural, uncut male organ truly beautiful.

I ADPETG77

you have written :

"I did have a similar incident where when I wrestled in high school, we had to go through a skin check. We were in our underpants in the locker room, and normally the underpants were not pulled down. The way the skin check worked was everyone lined up and went behind a small curtain and gave the examiner (in this case was female) the sports physical form that we had signed by the private pediatrician. For some reason, this pediatrician always commented that I was uncircumcised on the form, and this caught the attention of the female examiner. After I put my arms out to the side and examined my skin, she quickly pulled down the briefs and examined the genital area, and retracted the foreskin. This did not happen with other wrestlers as far as I know.

I am not sure why US doctors and nurses have such an weird obsession with examining foreskins."

I notice that you were examined by the female examiner but she was behind a small curtain to perform the examination.

You were lucky in my opinion because if it happened some years ago I have read some relations of physical examination for sport at high schools where the examination took place in a gym without any curtail and the doctor performed the examination of the students one after one while they lined up naked or in jocks or even in briefs but without any privacy when he or she pulled down the brief or instructed them to remove it to inspect the genitals or directed the students to turn around and after a visual inspection of their back to bend over for a quick visual inspection of their anus areas all publicly in front of all students and sometimes a coach.

It would have been much more embarrassing to be examined in front of classmates if you were uncircumcised and if it was noticed by the doctor publicly.

Because I was also born in Europe, my penis was not circumcised at birth. I came to the US when I was in my early 20s to attend college. Within a few weeks of my arrival, I was told that I needed to undergo a physical examination at the student health clinic. So, I went.

When I was filling out the questionnaire, I was very surprised to notice that one of the question asked if my penis was circumcised. I did answer "no." When I was finally called to the examination room, the doctor carefully reviewed my responses, one by one. Then, when I was told to lift my gown to my chest, the doctor asked if I had ever had any difficulty retracting the prepuce, and if I was thoroughly washing the glans after retracting the prepuce all the way back. He then explained that many men choose to have to have a minor surgery, called circumcision, to remove the prepuce all together, and asked if I was interested to be referred to a specialist.

On the form that the doctor filled out after he examined me, he marked the "Uncircumcised" checkbox and wrote "Redundant prepuce" next to it. I then brought this form to the coach. This was very embarrassing.

It also depends on your religion. Boys that are born Jewish are circumcised several days after birth. I am not sure about other religions. Growing up in a community (Upstate, New York) that most of us were Jewish, most of the boys I knew were all circumcised.

If you were not Jewish, about 98% of the non-Jewish boys were also circumcised. I saw my first uncircumcised boy in middle school gym class, and I was amazed that his penis had skin covering the head of his penis.

Since then, living in South Florida it seems a huge mix of guys are cut or uncut. I noticed boys from the Southern region of the USA, are not cut and in the Latino community most guys are also not cut. It seems boys/men that come from the Northern States of America or a larger populated (the larger cities) seem to be cut, in my observation.

I think it depends on the area, the community and how you are brought up and the culture and what doctors tell the mothers & fathers of new born males. I am not sure what parents are deciding on these days and what is the trend? I know for sure in the Jewish faith, the males are all circumcised.

I am Christian and thus was circumcised within a few days of birth by my actual pediatrician.

I am not sure why US doctors and nurses have such an weird obsession with examining foreskins.

I really wanted to disagree with you on this.

Physical exams, as how they are performed in the United States, are much more comprehensive as compared to how they are done in Europe. In the US, the examination of male external genitalia is a required component of the physical examination. Patients in the US are asked to wear a gown throughout the examination, so that a physician is able to have full access to particular parts of the body during the exam.

US physicians do not have any weird obsessions with foreskins, they were trained to perform the examination of male external genitalia, including male penis, in a certain way as to discover physiological abnormalities of the prepuce, if not previously removed during circumcision, the glans, and the shaft. Full and complete retraction of prepuce beyond the coronal sulcus is therefore required.

When we had sports physicals I pretty sure the female exam had no genitalia exam. The men’s did for sure.

]I think it depends on the area, the community and how you are brought up and the culture and what doctors tell the mothers & fathers of new born males.

In other words, apart from medical reasons, it depends on the specific socioeconomic conditions of the region (locality, or even the country) where you grew up in and where you currently reside, and the religious affiliation. The religious affiliation generally prevails over any socioeconomic conditions. Circumcision is often performed in regions where the majority of the male population is circumcised due to socioeconomic or religious reasons. Contrary, if a male has a strong religious affiliation that require males to be circumcised, that male will undergo circumcision even though the socioeconomic conditions do not favor the operation.

It is also expected that an uncircumcised male is going to be circumcised, if he intends to be permanently present in the region that favors the procedure.

The question at the beginning of the discusion was the lack of porivacy about comments on a medical form required to be filled and signed by a doctor after a physical examination to do sports. It was generally mandatory to be allowed to practice a sport either at high school or either at college.

I don't come back again on the set up of the physicals examination which could be in the past performed in group so the fact to be circumsided or not could not be a secret for the other boys and the coach but it was an other time when the privacy of boys was not considered as important.

Now that the physical examinations are normallly performed individually like it was in the first message, the question is about the fact that women working at the school records office or in the case of the first message a senior girl who was helping could had read the medical form for sports of a boy and its mentions since alll physical forms might be turned in that office, it was logica,l and that after they had talked about it to other girls.

Personnally, I don't think that it was so much a big deal.

It was not humiliating if that girl and a few other ones could have read it and knew that a boy student was uncircumcised . The better behaviour in such a case is to tell the truth.

The boy was 13 age and the girl was a senior student, so they were not often in relations at school. It is obviously that the girl would have been more discreet but it was not so important.

And it seems to me that if a girl is asking a boy"is it true that you are circomcised", he must answer "yes and why are you asking it to me, it is not important, except for me"

Same if there was a mention about the retractation of the penis and the tanner stage for pubic hair and testicular growth..Of course it was embarrassing when a physical form was so detailed to contain these informations but a medical form who did not contain enough informations would be useless. So it is better to have these informations than the reverse.

Of course the senior girl might have been more discreet about the medical form of a boy but it did not matter really ?

And I am not sure that it could have never happened to a student girl, I think that it could happen in the same way that some mentions of a medical form of a girl were not kept secreet.

Of course they had not a genitalia examination like the boys but may be a breast inspection with mentions about it on the medical form, would it be better ?..

And as regards the knowledge by a coach of what is mentioned on a medical form, I think that it is normal, he must know his students body. In the past he was sometimes present during the physical examinations performed without privacy, it was worse, now he reads only the mentions of the medical form, it is much less embarrassing.

As regards the quick examination of the penis and its retractation by a female examiner who performed a check of the skin behind a curtain for male wrestlers, it was not in my opinion an obsession with examining foreskins but a logical consequence of what was written on the medical form filled by a pediatrician since she had read that the penis was uncircomcised, she performed seriously the required inspection, she was right to check it.

As one of you had written, the boys would be less embarrassed if they had still mandatory showers in group like in the past after Pe lessons, no boys would be uncomfortable with nudity in public since all the male classmates saw each other at the shower areas. It would be better for them.

I am convinced that the respect of privacy of boys is going too far today.

As one of you had written, the boys would be less embarrassed if they had still mandatory showers in group like in the past after Pe lessons, no boys would be uncomfortable with nudity in public since all the male classmates saw each other at the shower areas. It would be better for them.

I am convinced that the respect of privacy of boys is going too far today.

Agree with you esaterman that if they grew up seeing each other naked in the showers then they would grow up comfortable with nudity and also more comfortable in their own bodies. When I was at school showers weren't compulsory as such, but everyone took one after pe but one or two boys did shower whilst still wearing their boxers. I never quite got that. When I go to the gym nowadays there's a choice of six cubicles or six communal shower heads. Me, my friends and my older brother just use the communal ones, nothing to hide from each other!

The question at the beginning of the discusion was the lack of porivacy about comments on a medical form required to be filled and signed by a doctor after a physical examination to do sports. It was generally mandatory to be allowed to practice a sport either at high school or either at college.

In the U.S. since 1996 there is a federal law on the books regarding health information privacy; HIPAA (Health Information Privacy and Accessibility Act). It defines PHI (protected health information) and establishes severe penalties for violations (up to 10yrs in federal prison and up to $250,000 in fines per incident). Any medical form is by definition PHI, thus this school, its nurse performing the exam and the senior student violated HIPAA rules and should be prosecuted.

https://www.hipaajournal.com/what-is-a-hipaa-violation/

In the U.S. since 1996 there is a federal law on the books regarding health information privacy; HIPAA (Health Information Privacy and Accessibility Act). It defines PHI (protected health information) and establishes severe penalties (up to 10yrs in federal prison and up to $250,000 in fines per incident).

If the statute of limitations has not passed I suggest ADPETXG77 file a complaint.

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/filing-a-complaint/index.html

@bobsie HIPAA is US LAW. Adpet is from Japan. How on earth would a US law apply in Japan? It doesn't!