Once again, many thanks to those who submitted stories! All represent very different aspects of how gender affects our lives in medicine and allied health fields, and with your help, we can keep the dialogue alive.
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Medical student, female
One thing I always noticed every time I interviewed at a medical school this past year, was that there were always more guys than girls. I was also never interviewed by a female member of faculty. At each interview I was surrounded by other prospective doctors, most of whom were men, and I felt proud. So very proud. Proud that I, a girl, was given an interview. That they were considering me to join the ranks that have been occupied by a majority of men for too long. Although it’s getting better, the numbers of women and men applying and matriculating into medical school are not yet at 50-50. But I am proud because I brought those numbers a little bit closer.
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Attending physician, female
Surgeons were especially fond of belittling women. “You can’t me a surgeon, you should be a nurse.” I had a direct experience which paralleled this quote. In our third year we were required to spend 8 weeks in dog lab. This is something which no longer exists. We were required to operate on dogs and keep them alive for ongoing surgery. The week that I was the surgeon, I was busy removing part of the stomach when the attending surgeon who was supervising us came to our table to watch me work. “you have very good hands. Have you ever thought of going into surgery,” he asked. Then he looked at my face and saw that I am a woman. He snickered and said, “yes, take those hands away. You belong in the kitchen.” I responded, “and that is why I would never think of surgery.”—Constance Shames MD. From “Death of a Scholar,” an autobiography including tales of Downstate in the 60’s.
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Nurse, Female
1966: There I sat, a young female nurse, at the nurses’ station carefully writing my patients’ notes, when in walked THE DOCTOR (male of course!). He looked around and seeing no chairs, looked at me with a stern frown and said, “You, get up, I want to sit down!” Who else was in the area? A couple of other doctors, male, who were also writing notes. They looked up at him, smiled, and went back to their work. What did I do? What would you expect? I was a good obedient nurse. I got up and provided a place for him to sit. Ah, those were the days!!
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Medical student, female
I volunteered as an EMT in college. During training and on the job, I found that the machoness of the field could be overwhelming sometimes. One call sticks in my mind in particular. I had a Friday night shift, with a male partner. The patient on this call had too much to drink, and we were called in to check him out. He was a rather effusive drunk, and proclaimed that I was beautiful and asked if I wanted to marry him. My partner’s response was “Yeah, she’s pretty.” I really wished that my partner had instead said something to the effect of “That’s inappropriate, she’s here to take care of you,” because that response made me feel worse. I care a lot more about being good at my job than looking good, especially at three in the morning when my job is making sure someone doesn’t aspirate their own vomit.
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Medical student, male
If I had told anyone that I didn’t expect my first pelvic exam to be awkward, I would have been lying. Of course it was going to be awkward. It was to be composed of me trying to interact professionally with an area I had previously experienced only in the least professional context possible, absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing, while the woman I was supposed to be examining actively judged my performance. I was just hoping to make it through without any trauma that couldn’t be solved by laughing at my ineptitude over a few beers with friends.
However, I’ve never been one to think that delaying the inevitable will make dealing with it any easier. It just earns you more time sitting there dreading what’s to come. And so, talking among the other people in my group before our patient for the evening showed up, I volunteered to go first. The two girls were moderately relieved, and I was happy to get it out of the way. Our instructor, in her late 20s, arrived and walked us through the exam. Her demeanor was professional but kind, and other than the natural, inevitable feeling of forced smiles and artificiality that accompanies situations like that, things felt relaxed enough that I started to think that things might actually go OK. When she asked who wanted to go first, I gave my best professional smile. “I’ll go first.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then broke off awkwardly, the first hitch in her practiced routine. She looked at me for a second, at the two girls, and then, through an increasingly heavy silence, back at me. “May I ask why?”
What? Why? Why does she want to know why? I was completely thrown. It was not a question I was ready for. And then I became suddenly and painfully aware that I was the only man in the room. And she was a young woman who was about to make herself exceptionally vulnerable, and I had volunteered. I instantly convinced myself that I had been too eager, and that my smile had been much more creepy than professional. But more than embarrassed for myself, which I was plenty, I felt completely ashamed that I had made this woman uncomfortable. It was so anathema to the way in which I was and am trying to relate to my patients as a medical student and future doctor. I wanted to apologize, to assure her that I meant absolutely nothing by it, and we could go back to being calm, fake-smiling professionals doing a perfectly artificially-normal thing.
But, I couldn’t acknowledge that it had happened, not and go on with what I still had to do. So, I did my best to hide my guilt, explained as plainly as I could that we had decided previously that I should go first, and proceeded as best I could with the exam. But it was already broken. My hands were shaky, I was awkward and apologetic, and the entire time I couldn’t stop thinking about it. At first, I was kicking myself for whatever mistake I made to make her feel so threatened. But then I realized that had a woman volunteered, she would not likely have given it a second thought. And I will not tell you that did not breed some resentment in me.
I finished the exam, smiled, and thanked her for her time. I think I’ll carry that experience with me for a while, though I guess I’m not sure what to learn from it. At any rate, I certainly didn’t learn how to give a proper pelvic exam. But in that, anyway, I think I’m probably not alone.
mandy
simw