Wayfaring MD: Missionary Physician
I like to highlight the hilarious in medicine as I write about patients, medical school, residency, medical missions, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Oh yeah, and I like to use GIFs!
Disclaimer:
HIPAA is for reals, folks. All of my "patient stories" have been changed to protect patient privacy. I will change any or all identifiers, including age, location, race/ethnicity, sex, medical history, and quotes.
Sister: GAH! These cramps are killing me! Midol is not helping!
Dad: You should try that Lydia Pinkham herbal stuff. It really works.
Me, Mama, Sister all together: 
HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?
Mama to Dad: 
Me to Dad: 
Me to Sister: 
ephemeraltwilight Asks:
wayfaringmd Said:
Welcome, ladies, to another round of That Girly Stuff. This episode is titled, “Girl, what yo name is?” and is brought to you by the letters M and D and the number 4.
Name changing seems to be a bigger issue for ladies in medicine, for whatever reason. Personally, when/if I get married, I’m changing my name. No hyphens. My last name isn’t hard to pronounce or weird or anything, but I’m a traditional girl and I want to take my husband’s name. Simple as that.
But there are some issues to consider when it comes to name-changing.
1. Are you already an established doctor before you change your name? Some women choose to keep a “professional name,” just for simplicity’s sake. It can be very confusing for patients when their doctor changes her name.
2. Is your name difficult to pronounce? If I was formerly Dr. Szczepanski and was marrying a Smith, I would probably lean towards changing to Smith. But if I was a Jones and was marrying an Nzeogwu, I might stick with Jones, just for ease of pronunciation (especially if I lived in the South, cuz y’all know how we butcher names).
3. Is your husband a doctor too? Because no one wants to be called He-Dopke or She-Dopke (as we called two of my chemistry professors). That whole professional name thing might be helpful in this case.
4. Is your hyphenated name super complicated? If it’s more than 2-3 syllables, folks aren’t going to say it. Most people I know who hyphenated ended up being called one name or the other, even though they constantly corrected people.
Thoughts, ladies? What name are you going with?
Oh my gosh, what if we had audio medical textbooks narrated by Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones? Female med students would be BALLIN. Someone would get rich for sure.
I recently went to a party (read: extremely WASPish supper club) with a bunch of ladies that ranged in age from 25-40ish. I stuck with the younger ones, mistakenly believing that I would have plenty in common with them to talk about.
When we sat down for dinner, they all started talking about their children. Is this all that women have in common to talk about these days? I love babies and kids, but when they’re not around, let’s talk about other things. It doesn’t have to be deep. I could talk about Adele and her mountain of Grammys for quite some time, believe me.
So while they’re talking about their kids and their comparative athletic abilities, I’m sitting there eating my salad thinking,
Imma get me some kids. Gotta work on that whole boyfriend —> husband —> pregnant process first though. After all,
I can get kids. Then I can join in this conversation. But I was not finna be the single girl who starts talking like she knows all about having kids. Uh-uh. Nope. I’ve seen The Look mommies give those girls, and I was not going to be on the receiving end of The Look. You know the one.
Yeah. So I just sat and ruminated on my salad and waited for a change of topic. There came a point when I thought, “maybe one of them will talk about their sick kid and I’ll at least be able to jump in with some medical mumbo-jumbo.” I was super tired from getting up in the middle of the night to drive to the state capitol with my mentor (to hear her speak to the legislators on rural health) even before the crack of dawn, so I was not really in the mood to come up with appropriate small-talk.
Medical school has put my normal adult life development on slow-mo. I couldn’t relate to these ladies at all. Granted, my inability to relate was compounded by the age/social status barrier and my terrible mingling skills, but I just couldn’t get to their level. During dinner I was just trying to make it to the “game night” portion of the evening, where I could let my competitive nature and board game strategery skills take over for me.
In the end, the only thing I contributed to dinner conversation was facts about testicular torsion.
It’s ok, you can read that sentence again to clarify.
Yep, I talked about testicular torsion at supper club.
I didn’t bring it up, though. One mommy mentioned that their little Johnny’s best friend got kicked in the groin at soccer, which led to much speculative chatter about the damage that might have been done by the cleat. This led to Torsion Talk, which they all were concerned about (for their little Johnnys’ sakes, of course), so they all turned to me for explanations. Can you really blame me? I had been up for about 18 hours at that point and I was fading. I needed to be able to join in conversation somehow.
But where should conversation go from there? What is an appropriate segue away from Torsion Talk? I just stayed quiet from then until dessert.
Have you ever been there? Has school made you socially awkward with other females?
moxacautery answered your question: That Girly Stuff: Making Less Money Than the Fellas
The female-dominated fields are lower-paying because they have more females in them. Usually when a field gets more males, salaries rise.
I don’t think this is true. Think about it. 50-60 years ago, all of medicine was male-dominated. Primary care specialties didn’t start getting paid less because women had infiltrated them. No, they started getting paid less because of government crap and insurance company crap. Whether you’re female or male doesn’t matter. You ultimately get paid by insurance companies, Medicare/Medicaid (aka Uncle Sam), or out of patients’ pockets. Primary care doesn’t get paid as much because procedures tend to get better reimbursements than prevention and primary care do. That has nothing to do with the gender of the doctor and everything to do with what type of medicine they chose to go into.
carrotcupcake answered your question: That Girly Stuff: Making Less Money Than the Fellas
Yes, but why are the specialties that tend to have more women lower-paid (that is, less prestigious) than those with more men?Like I said, in my experience it seems that there are more women in primary care than more specialized fields. And primary care (Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics) don’t pay as well because the stuff you do doesn’t get reimbursed as well as procedures do. I mean, it sort of makes sense (to a degree): if a cardiovascular surgeon did 5 years of surgery residency and X years of fellowship, and they’re cutting open people’s freaking beating hearts, they should probably get paid a little more than primary care folks. It’s not because what they’re doing is any more valuable, but because it took much more training to be able to do it. I mean, hey, I’m going into Family medicine. I would love for FP to have higher pay, but when the government’s in charge, things don’t always happen in a way that makes sense.
Great question, greylambie. Well, to be honest, it doesn’t bother me all that much. Before y’all get all feminist-angry with me, let me clarify.
In general, women make less money than men. That’s super not fair when they’re doing the exact same job (meaning same responsibilities, hours, and required training).
However, there are some jobs, like medicine, which can’t be compared well between males and females, and here’s why.
Salaries in medicine vary widely, even within a specialty. This has a lot to do with a physician’s training, location, patient population, and their payer sources. For example, a family doctor who sees lots of privately insured people or who does lots of procedures probably gets paid considerably more than the doc working in an inner city clinic seeing majority medicaid and medicare patients. And the gov’ment doesn’t care if a doctor is male or female. They’re getting the same reimbursement rates. And then again, a family doc who signs a contract to be a hospitalist will also have a vastly different income.
Some specialties have significantly more females than others. I don’t have data to back this up, so correct me if I’m wrong, but my experience tells me that there are more women in the lower-paying specialties than the higher ones. OB-GYN is becoming more female dominated, as are family medicine and pediatrics. And personally, I don’t know many female interventional cardiologists, orthopods, or neurosurgeons. The exception might be radiology and dermatology, which are both high paying and probably more evenly split between the sexes. So of course, if there are more women in the lower paid specialties (which I assume they chose to be in), we will as a whole make less than men as a whole.
I think the data about male vs. female doctor salaries can be skewed if it doesn’t take into account the fact that a lot of female doctors don’t work the same hours that male docs do. A lot of ladies work less hours so they can be with their families more, and that’s a trade off that they’re ok with. Less hours = less patients = less things to bill for = less moneys.
So as far as my opinions go, yeah, I guess I wouldn’t really like it if I was getting paid less than someone doing the exact same job (like someone who was hired at the same time as me to do the same job), but if I had less seniority or a different practice makeup or less hours, it would make sense for me to make less. I guess what I mean is that it’s really hard to compare jobs in medicine because it’s all apples and oranges.
Thoughts?
I just received your most recent ad in the mail.
When I saw the front of the pamphlet, I wondered what it had to do with groceries, as the lady on the cover is in workout clothes and is doing yoga. I thought maybe the inside would be coupons for organic products, because clearly I associate tasty but overpriced food with fancy rich people already skinny people forms of exercise that require much more flexibility than I will ever have.
But then I opened it and saw this.
That Girly Stuff: Post-Interview Blisters
Y’all know how it is: you’re super excited that you have an interview (be it for med school, residency, etc), so you go out and buy a super fly new suit. But of course, none of the comfy, broken-in shoes in your closet look right with said fly suit. So you get some lovely pointy-toe heels that look great with your fly new suit.
On interview day, you get all gussied up. Your flyness is way beyond G6.
Everything is cool until it’s time for the dreaded Tour. (My worst one was over 45 minutes long and included discussions on the history and founders of the hospital.For reals.) Your tour guide is probably a skinny male intern who runs 15 miles a day in his spare time, so he elects that the group take the stairs throughout the tour, you know, to fit in a little cardio. You’re okay for the first few minutes, but after the fourth flight of stairs and a trip around the ER, your heels are starting to burn a little.
Being the typical female medical student, your closet is full of ballet flats, loafers, tennis shoes, and ugly hospital clogs. Your feet have grown accustomed to those ugly hospital clogs—with their cushioned heels and ample toe room—during your third year of medical school, so now you are more clumsy on heels than ever. But the heels were so pretty. And now, 4 hours into the interview day, the leather of those adorable pumps is just too constricting. There is more grinding going on in your shoe than at a high school prom.
Finally, you get to lunch/interview/car/anything involving a chair, and you slip the back of your shoe off to inspect the damage. And there they are: monster blisters. You go to put a band-aid on them and suddenly images of Step 1 study flood your mind. It’s Nikolsky’s sign. Your flaccid bullae have burst. Congratulations, you will now be avoiding sticking your feet in the bathtub for the next 3 days. I hope the interview was not at one of your “safety” programs. Hopefully it was actually worth the burn and sting of leather rubbing raw flesh.
Next time I’m going with wedges.
One of the residents on my team wore these bad boys today. A nurse was taking bets on how long she wore them before she started complaining. Every time we walked through that nurse’s floor, she’d call out the time. 6 hours! The resident never complained, though.
You could add all the heels of all the shoes in my closet together, and it wouldn’t be that high.
“I wouldn’t recommend that program. I mean, most of their residents are women. They can’t be too great of a program.” - The former head of surgery at my school to a female advisee.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m not cut out to be a surgeon. But hey, someone has to do it, and I’m really glad it ain’t me.
I just wanted to give a shout-out to all the female surgeons out there (and the wannabes and the ones in training) because they are hardcore. Some people are early birds. Some are night owls. I feel like surgeons have to be both. Me? I’m at my prime around 2pm. I can’t do it. But female surgeons: whoa. To work the INSANE hours they do, take crap from other surgeons, and still have families? That takes moxie.
As evidenced from my quote above, it seems like there is still a lot of gender inequality in medicine, at least when it comes to surgery. Female family docs, pediatricians, and OB-GYNs are a dime a dozen, but surgeons not so much. The Tumblr feminists will hate me for saying this, but I really do think that many girls are too sensitive for a life of surgery. That’s why we go into peds, FM, OB, etc. It’s true for me. I handle constructive criticism ok, but if an attending ever slapped my hand during a procedure, cussed me out in the OR, or chewed me out in front of other residents, I would have a very hard time keeping my composure. Girls who can handle that stuff definitely have my respect.
Where I did my training, the surgery department is still very much a man’s world. The surgeons use crude language and make dirty jokes in the OR. It’s a well known fact that one of our pediatric surgeons is only friendly to female students he finds attractive. And of course, during oral exams, girls who show a little skin are known to do better with the department chair than those who don’t. I don’t like that. I’d prefer attendings who don’t act like 13 year old boys— you know, ones who judge me on my skill and intelligence? I’d rather not put up with this kind of silliness, but hey, those of you who can tolerate it—my hat’s off to you.
One night some med school friends and I were talking about a dilemma we had all encountered immediately upon our acceptance to medical school: trying to find a good personal physician in town who was not affiliated with our school. Why? Because no one wants to get a pap smear from someone they work with.
As it turned out, one or two girls found good doctors not affiliated with the school and just recommended them to everyone else, so we all go to the same few doctors.
There was, however, one exception.
One of my friends-let’s call her Mary Beth-switched OB’s from a non-affiliated doctor to one of her former attendings.
She said she felt more comfortable with him because she knew him. Everyone else thinks she’s crazy. Especially since this particular doctor is kind of creepy and is known for his raunchy sense of humor.
Of course, now Mary Beth is interviewing for OB-GYN residency spots and has actually asked pregnant friends if she could assist on their deliveries (all have said no, heh). She even asked me if I would go to her once she was out of residency (erm, negative). I guess she has no shame.
Are my friends and I just too modest? Ladyreaders, what are your thoughts on this?
Hmm, never really thought about it. Well, I’m 25 and not married, never had a boyfriend actually (I’m not a weirdo I promise), so yeah…. we’ll say it’s because they’re intimidated of me. Let’s go with that. Or maybe it’s this…
Heh heh, jes kiddin.
I mean, I’d have to ask a guy that, but I’m sure it’s possible. I have had a friend or two tell me they were intimidated a little by me, but I think that’s kind of silly. I’m just regular people and for every thing I’m good at, there’s 3 things I’m terrible at.
There’s a growing trend in medicine: the number of females in medical school is increasing every year, and pretty soon, we’ll be the majority. I wonder if there’s a study out there that shows how many of them will graduate still single.
Is this legit? Are guys easily intimidated by smart girls? We can’t help being smart. What are we supposed to do, act dumb so we can get a ring? What do you think, autonomyandlove?
This is probably the biggest issue that females in medicine have to deal with (or maybe it’s just me?).
First of all, guys are shy about their junk when they’re in the doctor’s office. They don’t want to examine it themselves, they don’t really want a dude to examine it, and they definitely don’t want a girl to examine them.
Fellas: suck it up. So you get a digital rectal exam every few years. So you have to turn your head and cough.
Ever seen a metal speculum? Ever seen a breast get squished in a mammography machine? Women get pap smears, breast exams, mammograms, colposcopies, have babies, and get the occasional DRE too. And it’s just as embarrassing and definitely more uncomfortable. But we do it. And many of us are totally ok with having a male examine us. You know why? Because we know that the doctor doesn’t go home with a picture of our nether regions in his head. But for some reason, men think it’s personal. Guys, I promise you, we don’t go home and reminisce about them.
I would say that about 95% of all the patients who have ever asked me to leave an exam room were old men asking their male doctor for Viagra. Um, hello? I know about ED. Girls can prescribe Viagra, too, you know. I have only had ONE guy in almost 2 years straight up ask me about his ED. I feel like men make the situation more awkward for female physicians when they act all weird. Usually we stay calm and cool because we’re taught to be professional about such things, but seriously, if you act all nervous, things could get awkward.
Honestly though, examining penises is awkward. Maybe it’s because we don’t have the parts, or maybe it’s because men make it awkward. I’m not sure which. I’ve never felt weird doing a pap smear or pelvic exam, though. Grossed out a little, sure, but not awkward.
Ladies, am I right?
So I told Dr. Cranquis that I sometimes write about the girly perspective (and it led to me getting a crap-ton of new followers), but after going through my blog a little, I realized that that’s not really true. So I guess I should fix that.
The main reason why I’ve never written about medicine/med school from an overtly feminine perspective is that I don’t really think about it (well, except for when I look at all the babies my friends are having and my ovaries try to explode on me). I pretty much just go with the flow (*insert menstruation joke here*) and deal with stuff as it comes.
You see, I’m single as single could be. No prospects on the horizon. It’s just me and Lucille. So for now at least, the thought of how I’m going to balance work and family life hasn’t really crossed my mind yet. Why worry about something that I’m not certain is going to happen for me? My concerns are more of the how-am-I-ever-going-to-find-a-husband-if-I-never-leave-the-hospital type.
But I guess I should think about that stuff, right? I don’t know. I’m sort of from the I-can-have-it-all school of thought. My mom worked 50+ hours a week my whole life, and I don’t feel like I was ever deprived for not being around her every second of the day. And it’s not like my father(s) were Mr. Mom either. But they say babies change things, so who knows? Maybe I’ll have one and melt and have to be a stay-at-homer.
But hey, I’m doing family medicine. And I plan on being a missionary—a job not known for its grueling hours—so I feel like I’ll have time to do family stuff and medicine stuff. That balance would be much harder to achieve if I were going to be a surgeon. But my decision to go into family medicine had nothing to do with my desire to have a family. I have friends who are really struggling with their specialty choice, though, because they want to be around as much as possible for their families (and some of these people are just as single as I am!).
And then you also have to factor in residency time. I’ve seen pregnant residents, and they look completely miserable. If you’re doing a 5-7 year residency/fellowship, is it worth it to wait till you’re done to start having babies? Being the medical folk we are, we all worry about having birth defects from our “advanced maternal age.” Ugh. Such a terrible term. But at the rate I’m going, I’m not going to have to worry about getting pregnant during residency. I just need to worry about my ovaries shriveling up before I get a chance to have babies.
I think this post could go on and on, but I’ll stop here. There you have it: I’m not worrying about balancing doctoring and babies. I’m mainly trying to figure out how to make it to graduation in one piece.
