youngfemaledoc

Thanks to everyone for your opinions. I just wanted to respond to one comment that was directed toward me in particular. Bluesky, the reason I sought out this discussion board is because I was interested in the nursing perspective on the physician-nurse relationship, not because I was really bothered by being mistaken for a nurse. I have read many of the threads in an attempt to better understand the issues in nursing, and I took sufficient interest in this topic to post because it seemed that in several threads the young female physician was named as being particularly difficult to stomach. In fact, more than one person commented specifically about the fact that young female physicians did not like being mistaken for nurses as though this was inherently a bad thing. I just wanted to toss out another perspective about why some of us get frustrated by that frequent assumption, as an alternative to the opinion that we as a group look down on nurses. Happy New Year!

I was reading some of the comments relating to the nurse physician relationship, and I agree that there is room for improvement in the way that we treat one another in some circumstances. Being a young female physician, I was naturally interested in the numerous comments about the attitude problem of young female physicians who do not like being confused with nurses. I am inferring that nurses feel that this attitude is condescending, as though the reason we do not like it is because we feel that being a nurse would be beneath us. At least from my standpoint, my dislike of the "young woman = nurse" assumption is not a nurse-physician issue but a gender issue. I do not mind the occasional patient calling me nurse once; what is frustrating as a young female physician is the pervasiveness of this assumption throughout our daily activities. I wear a large, red nametag with the letters MD on it, and every time I walk into a room a introduce myself as a doctor. Without insulting people's intelligence, I do not know what else I can do to make my role in the hospital experience clear. However, at least once a day, someone complains that no physician has been in to see them. I find it amazing that we live in a society in which gender roles are still so clearly defined.