![doctors in training are called doctors in training are called](https://healthydebate.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/doctor-supply.jpg)
Furthermore, the convenience of the stereotype is born from the assumption that a woman in scrubs couldn’t possibly have gone through the extensive training required to become a doctor. A two-second glance at my badge could confirm my role in the hospital, but many people don’t even take that time, which alone is sufficient grounds for my irritation. It’s not just because it is factually incorrect rather, it is an incorrect assumption based on a stereotype. However, I worry a bit when I hear conversations among female physicians going something like this: “…and then, he called me a nurse! Can you imagine? Um, excuse me, I did not go through four years of medical school to be called a nurse.”Ĭan we stop for a moment and consider why being called a nurse is insulting to female physicians and medical students? Certainly, with the myriad of roles and responsibilities in a hospital setting, having your position constantly mistaken for another is not only frustrating but can also compromise patient care due to miscommunication between team members. As a female medical student myself, I like to joke that if I had a dollar for every time someone in the hospital calls me a nurse, I could pay off all my student loans. medical schools in 2019, female medical students, residents and even attending physicians are far more likely to be mistaken for nurses than their male counterparts - women of color, even more so. Despite the fact that more women than men enrolled in U.S. It’s a common scenario: a male medical student and a female resident walk into a patient’s room together, and the patient automatically assumes that the man is the doctor, and the woman is the nurse.