EM wins, #3

On Being Called a Doctor

"Did you see the guy in 82?"

"I literally just walked out of the room."

The nurse rolls her eyes. "He said no one has seen him yet."

"Well, I guess I'm no one."

As a female doctor, you get used to being no one.

I used to introduce myself to patients by my first name and tell them I would be their doctor that day. And repeatedly, I'd have extended interactions with those patients over several hours--eliciting their illness narrative, examining them, reporting back to them about their test results and making shared decisions about their care plans--only to have them call me "nurse," refer to me as "that lady," or ask, "When will the doctor see me?" "Why hasn't a doctor seen me yet? I've been waiting all this time here."

One might ask if this is really such a big deal. Sure, it makes my inner feminist wither, and it made it harder to cast off the initial tenuousness of my own understanding of myself as a doctor, but if patients are getting good care regardless of their perception of who I am, does it really matter?

Here's the thing. It matters when patients expect me to have nursing skills I don't have, like pulling and administering medications, priming their lines, or getting them the right type of bedpan. It matters when patients complain to hospital administrators that they never saw a doctor over a twelve-hour visit to the emergency department, when in reality they saw two--myself and a female attending. It matters when you're overworked, underslept, and it's just one more thing that takes away from your personal satisfaction and sense of self-efficacy at work, which ultimately compromises your relationships with patients.

Over time, I started introducing myself as Dr. Chary. No more first names.

I'm not really sure it helped.

And then one day, there was a small moment worth celebrating.

I had just finished giving a patient a spiel about migraine management, to which she responded, "Yeah, I think I understand this all a lot better after talking to you and the doctor."

My inner running commentary sighed. "The doctor" was a white male--the kind and brilliant attending physician who was supervising the residents in our pod that day. Here was yet another patient who thought I wasn't a doctor. But, as I so often did, I showed no reaction on my face. I simply nodded, as images and recollections of so many patients who couldn't believe a brown woman was their doctor flashed before my eyes.

"Wait," the woman said. "I didn't mean that you're not a doctor--I meant, after talking to you and the other doctor."

I now like to think of my inner feminist as a succulent plant. And that drop of water will last me a long time.