The other day, Doc Helen remarked that there were so many more positive portrayals of dads right before Father’s Day, and hoped things were changing.
I’d hoped so too, given the advances and growth in men’s orgs such as the National Coalition for Men, Fathers & Families and Michigan’s Father’s Rights Coalition.
Well, maybe those advances aren’t as large as they seem, as last night viewers of ABC’s Boston Med were treated to a national display of misandry and discrimination seldom seen even in a reality program. While most of the media focus has been on the double lung transplant in Episode #1 of this eight-part series, those who watched the whole thing saw something else, too.
The series follows doctors at three hospitals — Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Children’s Hospital Boston. It’s not all “feats of medical brilliance” as promised in this ABC press release.
At first we see ER resident Pina Patel in this light, taken from the show’s website:
Pina Patel is in her fourth and last year of an Emergency Medicine residency. A graduate of Ohio State, she struggles to gain confidence in a training program filled with colleagues toting Harvard degrees. After failing to perform a standard medical procedure and being criticized for her leadership abilities, Pina questions whether she is cut out to go the distance and become an attending.
The viewer wants to connect with the idea that all docs aren’t necessarily superheroes. Then this ER student physician is faced with a stabbing victim. While treating the patient, Dr. Patel is all business. Then later, she discusses the case with co-workers, and this all-female group finds something quite amusing in the fact their male patient was stabbed by his wife.
“I know I shouldn’t laugh,” Dr. Patel says, while barely suppressing a giggle. The group agrees they should not laugh, but that is exactly what they are doing.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the doc then goes on to opine something to the effect that the incident should have been a lesson to the man not to mess with his woman. In other words, this particular patient deserved a life-threatening assault because of his gender.
While it’s well-known that Massachusetts is one of the worst states in the union for male victims, due to the malignant Jane Doe, Inc., which is in charge of most of the “domestic violence education” for professionals in the state, one would think a medical doctor could put aside personal bias and treat a patient without the kind of judgment demonstrated by Pina Patel.
If she questioned her own abilities, she was certainly on the right track, as this person has no business in a discipline where a number of her patients would likely present an issue she feels strongly about. It is unknown as of this writing whether the patient received the same quality of care extended to others, or if anyone in authority at Harvard Medical School took any steps to correct Dr. Patel’s aberrant behavior. The suspicion has been raised by the doctor’s wholly unprofessional performance that perhaps this kind of conduct is acceptable at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
After all, the doctor is currently employed at Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Clara Medical Center, in the Emergency Medicine department. Kaiser Permanente would never hire a physician that was so clearly prepared to discriminate against a patient for any reason.
Or maybe they would.
Had the victim been female, there would have been no laughs, no expression that the patient somehow caused their own injury. Is not blaming the victim the Number One sin in the domestic violence field?
Or does Harvard Medical teach that some kinds of discrimination are just fine and to be engaged in whenever possible?
Doesn’t sound like you will be a fan of the ‘edited for ratings’ show however please consider this for a moment. The culture of the medical field is something one can’t understand unless you have lived and breathed it for some time. The only way to do what we do without being traumatized repeatedly by the violence we see is to find humor in it. Again, unless you are subject to the worst society can dish out you won’t be able to understand. This man’s face will flash before the Doctors and Nurses eyes for days or maybe years, as will many other victims we see. The dark humor only we can share with one another still can’t provide the relief we should be able to get after living through the trauma right along with each and every patient we see. The truth that only we can understand is that the dark humor is what separates us just enough from the patient so we too don’t relive the event (more than a few times). We are human too. If someone were to have interrupted the giggle you referred to, the Docotor would have been reminded of her true feelings and shared the very same feeling you do, or maybe she would have felt worse because she saw the emotion on his face and the fear in his eyes. Consider that, if you can. My colleague asked me yesterday how to forget the face of the drowning victim she did chest compressions on last week. We laughed over the drunk girlfriend slapping him to wake him up. ED RN
Start of 2006 I attended emergency at the local hospital with a serious injury. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a woman I have difficulty with removing clothes in front of women so asked if I could be seen by male nurses. That was refused due to no male nurses being on deck at the time. That I could cope with. However a couple of minutes later I overheard several of the nurses present discussing my request. Turned out I was the biggest joke of all time.
Meanwhile, in my country of Australia, many male victims of sexual abuse have no choice but to travel thousands of kilometers and pay privately for psychologists and counsellors when their own taxes support the same services in their own neighbourhoods. Services denied them because of their gender. Services that, when contacted, call those victims liars and laugh at them.