Never Assume

I am married to a man who is not Christian, I am often offended when some one assumes I am not Christian ( which I am ) because of my last name. My skin, eyes, and hair tone are naturally dark and another assumption people make is that I am Mexican , Hawaii, Italian or even Filipino. I always respond I am a mongrel, Russian, Irish and German. My point is I am often the recipient of assumptions regarding my race, religion and heritage which always raised my ire.

At work I was participating in an accreditation survey. This is a nerve wracking experience where an seasoned surgeon spends the day reviewing the program. My colleague received notification that the surgeon was coming from Puerto Rico, her reaction was “this is terrible he will not know the details of the program since he not “ American”. I pointed out that a Puerto Rican is an American and after looking at his resume that he was surgeon within the VA System. Initial communications with this doctor where tension filled. He mispronounced every one’s name , he demanded items instead of asking and some of the requests were unreasonable. The days before the survey were filled with anxiety and dread.

The day of survey quickly came. Initially, I thought, he was our worst nightmare, his answers were short and terse. He would not start the survey until the VP (who was stuck in traffic) was in the conference room. Worse the Surgeon in Charge of our program was a women and tension was so thick we could have cut the tension with a knife. I could not help by thinking why did we get stuck with this surgeon and it was going to be a very long day and would we pass the survey?

The survey finally started when the VP arrived. The surveyor’s opening sentence was that he had reviewed our application and that he commended the manager of the program. His issue was that she was over worked. He said he had to perform her duties in Puerto Rico due to the language barrier and she was over worked. This was great news since she did need help ( and had plead for help on deaf ears) now she has two people assisting her thanks to this surgeon. He put our application on the overhead projector, he said he was going to make changes (our self assessment). He went through the application line by line, in every case he changed our rating , but in our favor! He made wonderful suggestions to the program which has enrich the care to our patients.

At the end of the day, he departed, the committee felt foolish we all made assumptions this would be a horrible day due to the ethnicity of this surgeon. We did great, we learned how to improve the program and score high on re accreditation . I especially felt foolish since this is one of my pet peeves.