I went to see my doctor today. She has an office downtown in one of those little medical buildings, which she shares with several other doctors and a pharmacy. That tells you something about medicine right away. Not feeling well? Here—take a controlled substance.
The waiting rooms in doctor’s offices always seem to be full of women and children. You don’t see many men there. If you do, they are usually old. This is a well-known fact: women go to see the doctor way more often than men do. Why? Are they sick more often? Maybe it’s because the parts of the human body that are responsible for giving birth are unnecessarily complicated and need a lot of maintenance. The corresponding male organ seems highly resilient and durable. Or maybe men just never bother to get it fixed. Which is the truth? I don’t know.
My doctor is a female. This made me nervous when I made my first visit. But she put me at ease almost immediately by inviting me to undress and lay on the table while she strapped on a disposable glove. Then she invited the nurse in to watch, just to be sure I was feeling safe and comfortable. Hell, invite everybody in.
I found it a little strange. Equality gone amok? The nurse was in there to make sure that nothing "inappropriate" happened, or, at least, nothing inappropriate without a witness. This puzzled me. There were three possible inappropriate things that could happen. Firstly, the doctor might have assaulted me. Secondly, I might have assaulted the doctor. Thirdly, we might have had an argument—maybe about my high cholesterol—and assaulted each other.
We don’t usually worry about a female doctor assaulting a male patient. But we do worry about male doctors assaulting female patients. But it would be unfair to require a nurse to be present whenever a male doctor examines a female patient and not require a nurse to come in when a female doctor examines a male patient-- everybody has to be equal-- so the nurse comes in for everybody.
On the other hand, the nurse was also a female. Would it be considered appropriate for a male doctor to summon a male nurse to make sure nothing inappropriate happened while he examined a female patient? I don’t think so. What we have here is a conflict between two cultural ideals: equality and protection.
I wondered whether the nurse was in the room to protect me or the doctor. I wanted to tell my doctor that if it was for my sake, I’d just as soon take my chances and not have a spectator. But I couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to say so. So the nurse sat there on a chair. She couldn’t actually read or anything like that. She had to watch. But everybody in the room knew that it would be embarrassing for her to watch too closely, so she just kind of looked in our general direction without actually seeming to see anything.
I think every doctor should be required to be a "patient" for one hour a week. They don’t always seem very sensitive to the patient. I’m always nervous as a patient. When I was a child, the only time we saw a doctor was to get a needle. If doctors are smart, they will change this. They will invite children to come in and play with some toys and watch the doctor do surgery or something. Make it festive and fun. Nowadays I’m not worried about needles, but I get nervous when the doctor tells me to undress and lie on a table and then she goes out of the room for fifteen minutes and comes back in with a nurse, "to watch".
Back to my visit-- after sitting in the waiting room for five minutes, a nurse came and fetched me and led me to one of the examination rooms. There was not much in this room. A few chairs, a desk, and a counter with a sink. There was a box of rubber gloves and a tube of petroleum jelly on the counter. And the examining table, a rather mechanical piece of furniture with a black vinyl cushion on it. The room was painted pink. The nurse left the door open and I was able to hear a woman in another room explaining her symptoms to the doctor. I think she must have just started talking about it without waiting for an official examination to begin, because the first thing the doctor did when she came into my examining room was close the door. Maybe the patient didn’t think anybody else could hear. I often act that way myself at work, talking on the phone in my cubicle. You get a false sense of security because you can’t see anybody else nearby, and you can’t hear them, of course, unless they are talking on the phone.
My doctor must have gone to some kind of conference on patient-doctor relationships. At my first visit, she was very "traditional". I want you to do this and that and then I’ll have a look here and tell you what we’re going to do. At my more recent visits, it was more like "what would you like me to do? I recommend this, but it’s up to you. You tell me when if you want this or that checked." She has a poster on the wall stating that she does not casually prescribe antibiotics, because over-prescribing antibiotics has led to some strains of viruses becoming resistant.
Generally, I enjoy visiting the doctor. I used to think that anybody being paid to care for you didn’t really care for you. Now I think that just because someone is being paid doesn’t mean they don’t want to do a good job. It’s all where you draw the line.
Copyright © 1999 Bill Van Dyk All rights reserved.
