The operating room, once an exclusive club for male surgeons, is becoming more welcoming to female surgeons. But the experiences of local doctors suggest that full gender equality has not yet arrived:
■ A female surgeon pointedly asks why her patient is late being wheeled into the operating room, and is accused by nurses of being too aggressive.
Comments
Same old, same old. I would expect Medicine to be a field where this idiocy was over 50 yrs. ago. Shameful. I've had the privilege to befriend two M.D.'s that happen to be women. I was amazed at the stories they related to me about their Medical School experiences. Their Internships? Fugedaboudit. The Medical/Surgical "Establishment" needs to get over themselves. Really.
Nobody wants to talk about the issue of part-time female doctors. Success as a doctor has a lot to do with "mileage." The more patients you've treated, the better you get at making diagnoses and operating. If you're in the office only 60% in comparison to your male counterparts, you're never going to get the patient experience they get. This is one of the main reasons why female part-time docs don't earn their male counterparts' respect. It's also one of the reasons why these women are steered away from time-burdened specialties. Our discussions about male versus female professional status has to take a more open and honest view.
So sorry to read these comments to the effect that the problem is that women are less committed, less hard working and less competent,etc and that white men are the real victims.
After 30 years as a woman full time general surgeon surrendreing at least 50 weekends on call ,while raising 4 childrren with a husband working full time, I find that my experiences correlate very precisely with the incidents and problems outlined in the article.
WECANTGETNORESPECT and daily we compensate for the ,sadly behind the times, shortcomings of some of our colleagues.
Why is the assumption always that the reasons for failure of all but white men are discriminatory?