I'm sorry you have to deal with this. The "do your own research" comments about vaccines, etc make my head spin. I am not in the medical field and trust the experts (and also appreciate the discussion with my physicians). The RFK nomination has my head spinning so thank you for calling out the current politics.
Emily - thank you for sharing! I cannot imagine being constantly refuted by "non experts" on topics that you've trained so hard and so intentionally to master. I lose my sh*t when my mostly qualified and certainly educated bosses push back on my less-than-life-altering work.
How was your experience been as a female physician with female patients? I feel like I read (there it is again - thinking I am educated on the matter) a lot about women knowing that something is "wrong" but then being told that everything looks fine or it's in their heads. Slightly different thought stream than what you're sharing but as someone who was recently diagnosed (not sure if that's even the right verb) with PCOS, I am more and more curious about the discovery part of medicine.
Juliana, like you, I have also read about the widespread dismissal of women in healthcare settings. I make a concerted effort to ensure women feel heard in our encounters. All too often in the emergency medicine setting, I am in the business of ruling out life threats, rather than making diagnoses. Put another way, I find out what is NOT wrong with you, without discovering what IS wrong. I have found that when I say, “nothing life threatening is happening here”, patients often hear “there is nothing wrong with you.” These are different statements. I try to make sure my patients—especially female patients—feel heard and believed and have a plan for what the next steps should be to continue on their quest for answers. Our healthcare system is horribly broken, and patients have to work much harder than they should to advocate for answers in too many cases.
I'm sorry you have to deal with this. The "do your own research" comments about vaccines, etc make my head spin. I am not in the medical field and trust the experts (and also appreciate the discussion with my physicians). The RFK nomination has my head spinning so thank you for calling out the current politics.
Thank you for the solidarity! So glad to have you here
Emily - thank you for sharing! I cannot imagine being constantly refuted by "non experts" on topics that you've trained so hard and so intentionally to master. I lose my sh*t when my mostly qualified and certainly educated bosses push back on my less-than-life-altering work.
How was your experience been as a female physician with female patients? I feel like I read (there it is again - thinking I am educated on the matter) a lot about women knowing that something is "wrong" but then being told that everything looks fine or it's in their heads. Slightly different thought stream than what you're sharing but as someone who was recently diagnosed (not sure if that's even the right verb) with PCOS, I am more and more curious about the discovery part of medicine.
Juliana, like you, I have also read about the widespread dismissal of women in healthcare settings. I make a concerted effort to ensure women feel heard in our encounters. All too often in the emergency medicine setting, I am in the business of ruling out life threats, rather than making diagnoses. Put another way, I find out what is NOT wrong with you, without discovering what IS wrong. I have found that when I say, “nothing life threatening is happening here”, patients often hear “there is nothing wrong with you.” These are different statements. I try to make sure my patients—especially female patients—feel heard and believed and have a plan for what the next steps should be to continue on their quest for answers. Our healthcare system is horribly broken, and patients have to work much harder than they should to advocate for answers in too many cases.