saw a woman talking about how betrayed she felt by her female gyno who really hurt her during a pap smear & claimed the cervix has no nerve endings. & i really do feel for her but also I think this is the problem with people only viewing medical bigotry and abuse as a problem that is the byproduct of other forms of bigotry & not tied to how the medical establishment works inherently.
it's not just "that doctor has internalized misogyny" it's that western medicine is, as in so many parts of our culture, deeply authoritarian. the patient is meant to be a passive problem to be solved by the active doctor. there is meant to be a stark harsh line between you and the doctor, where you are pure of any medical knowledge and simply report the raw data & let the doctor interpret it. this is how the system works. it fucks over marginalized groups the most because that's how marginalization works, but even a thin white abled cis man could get fucked over by this shit if he's unlucky.
female doctors will not save us! trans doctors will not save us! doctors of color will not save us! these are all GOOD things and we DO need more representation in the medical field, it DOES help. but it will not save us. the same goes with teaching as well frankly. these issues cannot be reduced down to simply getting more people from columns B C and D into the same fucked system. nothing can make up for the societal change of heart we really need.
#I'm biased because i work primarily with residents #but i really do think changing the culture of residency is the key to changing so many problems in medicine #if you're expected to work to the point and past exhaustion you're going to expect your patients to tough it out #if you're expected to treat your attending as an unquestionable authority then you're going to expect your patients to treat you that way #diversity is not going to fix the issue that doctors have to endure legitimate trauma to get their license #and are also discouraged from getting therapy for that trauma for fear of losing that license which absolutely happens #the fact that therapy is discouraged and can risk your job rather than MANDATORY for physicians is so backwards #i know what viewing all those pathology images did to me i can't even imagine what that does to someone working in clinical care #i think the way doctors behave make more sense if you realize that every single one of them has unprocessed trauma
(Tags from mixedmeter-wav)
Long rant incoming
I've worked medical for over a decade (10 years as OR Attendant, 4 years as Anesthesia Supply Tech, 3 years BHA)
I agree fully with the above post that so much of what makes medical terrible is the fact that patients are seen problems to be solved and that if your problem isn't easily solved it's because YOU, THE PATIENT, have fucked up in some way.
The constant assumption that if you can't be "cured" it's because you're actually just lying and it's not really that bad.
The constant assumption that if you aren't cis, het, and white then the medical workers have to be on egg shells around you or risk a lawsuit.
The constant attempts to just speak at the patient and expect that patient to believe, understand, and go along with everything you say.
This all comes down to a fundemental interpretation of the medical team being at odds with the patient.
Good medical care, the medical care we should be expecting and moving towards, is always going to be collaborative. A patient is a PART of the care team, always.
I've had patients tell me things that they never would have told the Dr. just because I sat with them for a bit and let them be very vulnerable about their thoughts and ideas.
I've had small break throughs with some of my psych patients where they literally just told me "I think it might be X based on what I read online." and we discussed why they think this and what exploring this possability would look like for them. "Yes, I can see where you're coming from. Let's explore that together and create a care plan and see what happens. Worst case scenario, we get some data to use together."
I have a lot more to say, especially on the topic of "fixing" people but that is an even longer rant and goes into ethics, a bunch of different isms, and the entire system as a whole viewing certain bodies as correct over other ones.
