“If you were male, we would have assumed you could suture.”
The doctor had a bright smile on his face and, as always, was trying to be charming. I looked over to my friend to confirm I’d heard him correctly. She looked as astonished as I felt. Here was a young, intelligent and upcoming surgeon and he was telling us that our weeks of hard work hadn’t mattered; only our gender did.
By this point in time, we had put in more than 50 hours each week at the hospital. We had attended every surgical theatre on offer, stood on our feet throughout the day following doctors, answered difficult questions, assisted in procedures, held up necrotic limbs, pulled back engorged intestines and sutured-up multiple abdomens.
We would come home tired and then study for hours about the conditions we had seen in order to learn more the next day. But despite all of this, here we were sitting in a room, with a flirtatious male being told that I had “lost weight and looked good” and the fact that I didn’t have “a boyfriend after all this time is unbelievable”.
Where was the mention of our hard work? Our clinical improvement? Our persistence? Our enthusiasm? Where was the advice for me as a student looking at a career in surgery? Where was the acknowledgement of us as future doctors? Where was all of this?
It seems that after weeks of diligent study, only my changing figure and current relationship status were worthy of mention. That’s when it hit me – Welcome to the exciting world of being a female in medicine.
As a fifth year medical student I am sad to say that I have seen, experienced and heard many scenarios echoing the themes of my most recent encounter. A woman walking through a hospital is often confused for a nurse, allied health professional or aide. While these jobs are integral to patient care and healthcare functioning, it highlights the fact that people often assume a female is not a doctor but the male next to her is.
Top Comments
It's apparently gone backwards since my day.
As a female doctor (as opposed to a med student, which the author is), my perspective and experiences aren't entirely mirrored by this article.
Even as a med student, my experience clearly wasn't like the author's. When i trained in the early 70s, one in three of the total university student body were women but we were 42% of medical students which officially made us a female dominated faculty 😊. We were on the cusp of a fantastic new world with very few folks thinking we were out of place. We forgave the old vets their friendly condescension because they came from a different time but they mostly wished us well too.
Now little girls are bullied if they wear their hair short, are vilified if they don't wear that bright toxic pink colour and won't think of themselves as worthy if they don't have fake boobs and lip filler. We had our struggles but we weren't wedded to toxic social media and terrified someone would unfriend us.
Patients of both sexes prefer female Doctors I have noticed. They brag about how good their female surgeon is because they rarely get to see one.
With GP's the females at the practice I work at are always booked out while the males are often left until last.
Hopefully with the feminisation of the medical degrees the sexism will gradually subside in the male dominated sectors within it.