LANGUAGE – FOR LOVE OR HATRED?

THE “SISTERHOOD” OF DOCTORS !

It goes without doubt that “sister” is one of the most hated words for a female doctor. Although sister means a female sibling in common English, in medical parlance a sister is synonymous to a nurse. Believe me, we have nothing against nurses. In fact, we are aware that a doctor or a hospital is non-functional without nurses. Well, why then this loathing? Let me explain.

For most of the patients, a youngish female medical staff, clad in white, is ALWAYS a sister aka nurse. And a male clad in white, or remotely looking educated, is a doctor. This gender bias against the value of our hard-earned degrees infuriates us. Some patients or their relatives even look down on the “sisters”, being rude to females and respectful to males. As International Nurses Day just went by, I could not help but be reminded of some bittersweet memories. Now they seem silly and funny, but back then my blood boiled.

My earliest experience was during my MBBS internship days, when we did everything from inserting IV cannulas, catheterizing, drawing blood, giving drugs, dressing wounds, suturing and the like. We, the interns, ran around from bed to bed doing our allotted jobs.  One task which was particularly not our job was changing IV Fluids. We did rise to the occasion at times, but by and large it was the nurses’ job. On a busy admission day in the emergency ward, where about a hundred patients were packed, every one minute or so, somebody`s IV Fluid would get over, or somebody`s fluid would not be flowing right. Whenever a patient or his/her relative saw a female intern, they would cry out in a loud voice, “ SISTER! GLUCOSE (patient`s nomenclature for any IV Fluid) IS OVER! Remove this bottle and put new one!”, OR “SISTER! GLUCOSE IN NOT GOING! Come and adjust it!”.

The funny thing was, many of them waited for a white clad female to pass by to voice their requests. They kept quiet when our male counterparts passed by. Most of the time we complied to the requests out of compassion. On a particularly rough day, we would retort, “I am not a sister! I am a doctor! Can`t you see the stethoscope around my neck?!”

Once in the medical ward, a patient came and asked for some help to the ward boy. “Doctor when is my insulin due?” The ward boy did not bother to correct him, but just replied that he should ask the sister. Its not rocket science to guess whom the patient promptly consulted.

These are just two of the incidents which happened to me. The female doctor fraternity everywhere face this issue on a regular basis, and I thought it wise to include few incidents faced by people I know.

Once a doctor friend of mine was sitting in the gynecology ward with her male colleague. A patient came and asked him for some help, to which he replied, “Please ask the sister”. She thanked him, and turned immediately to my friend and went, “Sister……”. This same friend once went to a surgical ward at night to check on the patients. As she was approaching the door, she could hear a patient`s relative demanding the nurse to clear some doubt, to which she replied that doctor will come soon and will clarify his queries. He replied, “No doctor will come at this time!” and completed the sentence just as she entered the ward. He saw her and asked her, “Am I not right sister? No doctor will come at this time to the ward, will they?” My friend, who was too shocked to defend the statement, slowly shook her head sideways, “…no….”.

Another friend, a surgeon, was similarly offended by a patient, and corrected him by saying that she was a doctor. The sly fellow tried to stand ground by saying, “Oh I meant ‘behan-waali’ sister, not the nurse type”. She retaliated even more furiously, “Do you call male doctors as bhaiya? If you don’t, then don’t call me sister as well!” She was once in for a shocker when, clad in full sleeve white coat and a smart stethoscope around her neck, she proudly marched into the surgical ward on a Doctor`s Day, to be greeted by a sweet “SISTER” call. This same friend was once called by a patient`s relative as ‘sister’ in the hospital lift at 3 am. At that insane timing, she demanded to know what made him think that she was a nurse. “Oh, obviously the only female staff in a hospital will be sisters…….” I didn’t bother to enquire about her response as my blood was already boiling hearing about this exchange.

Once a senior of mine helped a patient to cross the road. The patient thanked her with a “Thank you doctor” and started walking. Just as the essence of her good-will was sinking in, the patient came rushing back. “Sorry, I meant thank you sister…..”

Another doctor, an ENT surgeon, used to take the pains to explain to the poor patients about the basic differences between a nurse and a doctor – like the uniform and the stethoscope etc. More recently she came across a few Bengali patients in her OPD, who called her “chechi chechi”, which would be a Malayalam translation of “sister”. She feels a bit more favorable towards the English translation!

My own cousin, a physician at a prestigious institution in the country, told me about how she faces the issue every day! To mention one, once she was in rounds with her intern, a tall dark hefty fellow. All throughout, patients kept calling him as the “periya (senior) doctor”, while she was referred to as the sister!

As my skin thickened, my response changed from angry rebukes to one of indifference. I used to turn a deaf ear to the “sister, sister” call, until some other patients corrected them saying, “That’s not sister you fool! That is the doctor madam!” Of course, I did comply to do some things out of compassion, but it was the bias that really irked me.

Florence Nightingale

Having shared all this, I would again like to highlight the fact that it not because of any superiority over nurses that we get all worked up on being called “sisters”, but the gender bias which still makes a vast majority of people think that in a hospital, all males are doctors and all females are nurses! The effort it takes to don the white coat is not any different for males or females, so the differential treatment cannot be taken lightly. Now to talk a bit about the nurses, the “angels in white”, without whom medical care would have been grossly incomplete. The service they render to the society is magnanimous, but sadly our society has failed to appreciate their true value. Their culture is one pioneered by “The Lady with the Lamp”, Florence Nightingale, a lady who spread light among the wounded soldiers in the 19^th century, and whose birthday is celebrated as the “International Nurses Day” on May 12^th.   

 It would not be fair if I fail to mention that I, like any doctor, have been taught a lot by nurses, especially in my training years. I remember many incidents when sisters brought food from home for us starving training doctors. Many a time, when lost in the magnitude of work and busy schedules, they used to remind us to have food on time or rest for a while. Nursing care is the healing touch that many patients experience in their hospital stay. It would be the least I can tell about them, when I say nurses are “angels of light” in the medical profession.

Let me conclude with a simple statement. The next time you visit a hospital remember this, “All females are not nurses and all males are not doctors”!  The converse also holds true.