Dr. Who?

I'm bored, and since I'm bored, I wish to reflect on that age-old (ed. note: not really, it's only about three months old) conundrum: Why do the elderly think I'm a doctor?

Yes, it happened again, although at least this time I was spared the whole "Hey! I know you! You play that doctor on t.v., right?" thing. (Yes, and because primetime t.v. just ain't paying the way it used to, I also moonlight at the hospital on holidays, playing my doctor character as-seen-on-t.v.)

I hyperbolize, of course, nobody really thinks I'm actually Sandra Oh (dammit, because that would be cool. I'd be a sizzling hot actress with a blockbuster primetime hit American series and a Canadian citizen!) but I still somehow get mistaken for a doctor every once in awhile by elderly patients and their families.

I've figured out between the visibility of Asians-playing-doctors on t.v., and the fact that somehow the public must have some weird stereotyping thing going on whereby all Asians-in-the-hospital are instantly linked with the title "medical doctor," I get pinned for one from time to time, as I go about my lowly business of assessing pedal edema and hanging IVs. (Seriously, folks, have you ever seen a doctor hang an IV before? Maybe anaestheseologists with their bags of Lactated Ringers a'plenty, but on a medical floor, I've yet to see a doctor hang a bag of normal saline and prime the line, much less load the tubing onto the IV pump and connect the line to the patient's saline lock. Because nurses do that stuff. Because it's our job, and attending doctors do other stuff, or as often is the case, make housestaff and PAs do their "other stuff" for them.)

And I suppose if I were to verify my lame theory with actual research (were there any one one out there with similarly lame statistical information) I would find that most Asian Americans are destined from conception to go to medical school and become doctors, if their first-generation parents have anything to say about it, so it's really an understandable misconception when patients get confused about my role (that, and how many dozens of medical looking people sashay in and out of their rooms during a typical day. I mean, even the housekeepers wear scrubs. No wonder patients get confused. To them, I probably look like the same fresh-fashed intern from GI or Surgery that saw them earlier in the day, all happy and eager and full of brand spankin' new enthusiasm. Or maybe like me they've lost the enthusiasm part and just look exhausted and hypoglycemic because it's their third night in a row on call and if someone pages them again today they are going to lose it).

So this holiday, I was assessing a really advanced case of PVD (peripheral vascular disease) on someone's husband, and the wife happened to be on the phone and I overheard her say, "Oh. I have to go now. The doctor is here taking a look at [name of husband]."

Inside, I squirmed, thinking maybe I should have qualified my name with my position, which I usually do when introducing myself to family and patients. But I figured on a holiday it would be pretty self explanatory that you know, except for poor housestaff, pretty much all the doctors were at home with their families, stuffing themselves with tryptophan-rich meats and eggnog and shit, just as I would have been doing if I had the forethought a) to have been born in 1945 and thus have already completed four years of medical school, 4 plus years of residency plus god knows how many years of overtime and nights on-call while building my now successful private practice or b) been smart enough to get a M-F 9-5p.m bank teller job or computer programmer like everybody else that got the day off.

And then, because I'm self-depreciating by nature, I kept thinking how I'm That Stupid Asian Chick, because I know, deep down inside, for as much as I cherish nursing and value its many insights into the human body and soul (like by way of a stage 4 decube on the butt so deep I could actually see the man's coccyx bone) I would have never, ever made it in medical school/residency, because it just sounds so damn grueling and hard, and my job has plenty of that without going into six figure loan debt for the privilege.

Another recent case in point:

My mom and I went shopping once, and my mom made some offhand comment about my being in healthcare to the store clerk, who got all excited and dreamy eyed and chirped, "Oh, how lovely! So you're a medical student?" I said no, I wasn't, in fact, a medical student, I was a nurse.

Her response? Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada. She instantly busied herself with arranging the storefront, as if too embarrassed to say anything further. It was almost as if I had said, "No, my mom was just kidding, I'm really an exotic dancer and my stage name is Jasmine."

Any way. I think it's really ironic and kinda funny, because as much as I bitch about nursing, I like being a nurse, and I would have totally sucked at medical school, because when it comes down to it, I'd much rather sit on my ass surfing the internet on weekends than study or be on call endlessly for weekends at a time. And I would have never made it through pre-reqs like Calculus any way, seeing as I still count on my fingers and can't subtract in my head beyond single digits.

I could go on and on and on about the sociopolitical and economic ramifications of this discussion, but that would be to deconstruct more than I'm willing, and there are entire books on the subject, namely Suzanne Gordon's Nursing Against the Odds.

Besides, I'm just poking fun at the whole oddity of stereotyping, and stuff. (By the way, I've always wanted to end a formal essay with a crap conclusion, like, "Therefore, the implications of of Kant's Copernican revolution are such that the shortcomings of Rationalism cannot be overlooked, and stuff. The end.")