Patient Perspectives: Women Don’t Belong in Medicine

Getting to know patients who are under our care is one of the greatest privileges we have as healthcare professionals. Patient Perspectives is a series dedicated to sharing these stories (and what your caretakers tell their friends at home). Patient identifiers have been changed in order to preserve patient privacy. 

A few months ago, a 70-year-old woman came into the clinic with a chief complaint of bilateral joint pain in her hands. We got on the topic of school while I was rooming her, and her face lit up when I told her I was starting medical school this July. Come to find out she had recently retired from her career as a nurse anesthetist, and she was excited for the opportunity I had in front of me.

As I was about to leave the room after taking her history, she asked if she could tell me a story. She started by saying that she had initially gone to college at LSU to pursue medicine in the 1970s. Pre-med students at the time had to attend an orientation session at the School of Medicine in New Orleans before starting classes. She described how there were a total of five women, and they all sat together in the middle of the auditorium at the School of Medicine. A clinical faculty member scanned the room until he locked eyes on the girls in the session. The first thing the man said was, “All the women in this room need to leave and go to nursing school. A man won’t have to leave medicine when they decide to have children—and you’re taking a spot from a man”. My patient said that she was devastated, but she and the other women got up from their seats and enrolled in nursing school the next day.

What was even crazier to me when I heard this story was that this happened at the same medical school I’ll be attending in just a few weeks. I don’t think faculty are nearly as liberated in their ability to be blatantly misogynistic in an auditorium full of people today, but the '70s weren’t that long ago. This patient’s story also had me thinking about the number of women who have talked themselves out of pursuing careers as doctors, or paths of similar stature, because of this line of thinking.

Thankfully, the narrative for women pursuing careers as physicians has shifted drastically from the 1970s, with the student population at most medical schools today being 50% women. I also find it encouraging to see outspoken female physicians like Betsy Grunch, MD; Rupa Wong, MD; Pamela Mehta, MD; Natalie Crawford, MD; & Laura Vater, MD; who share their work and home lives on social media. Even for someone who doesn’t carry a lot of self-doubt, they’ve helped me see that being present as a mom and spouse while having a successful career in medicine in the near future is a tangible aspiration. Dr. Brielle Plost and Dr. Erin Derbigny set this example for me personally while I was an MA. 

When someone tells you no—that it’s not possible, that they’re telling you no because the person above them would say the same thing, or that your vision is unattainable—see it as being the limitations they’ve placed on themselves. You’ve simply passed up their knowledge and work ethic with your vision, and that’s a great thing. My mom always told me to never tell myself no before someone else does. Meaning, don’t talk yourself out of it and don’t take the first answer as being the only answer. Above all, God would not have put it in your heart if he was not prepared to equip you with everything you need to achieve it.

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