May 2022

When I was in medical school, one of our female attending physicians told us her young son had once been asked if he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. “No,” he replied. “Only girls are doctors!”

The dad who drove me home after babysitting seemed surprised when I said I planned to be premed. After a pause he said, “Well, you’ve been oppressed for hundreds of years, so you should have an easier time getting into med school.” My brain froze. All I could think was “I’m only 17. What is he talking about?”

The rooms on the observation unit are small, so as I rounded with my team, we were forced to encircle the patient’s bed to fit in the space. I, her attending physician, stood at the right side of the head of the bed as one resident, two interns, and three medical students took their places around the bed. She looked at our group and asked who was present. Before I could introduce each team member, she looked at me in my long white coat and attending physician ID badge and remarked, “Clearly, you’re my nurse.”