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Who cares?
For the secret to the care of patients
is caring for the patients.
Back in the old days, no woman was admitted to medical schools. Medicine, like many other professions, was dominated by naive men on the grounds that women did not have same intellectual capabilities as men.
Times have changed. In the medical class of 2001, the ratio was 54:46-- in favor of women. If the admission people were not deliberately biased, what then made women more successful?
I agree with
the Dean of Medicine that he had made no mistakes in choosing
us (there are always a few exceptions of course). Most students
in the class were really nice and wonderful people. So I wouldn't
want to start stereotyping them, but sometimes I just couldn't
help noticing the stark contrasts between the 2 genders. When
it came the time to compete with the law students for the friendly
"Malpractice Cup" in sports (and beer drinking), the guys got
all pumped up. After class, guys flocked toward the gyms. They
also teamed up in martial arts courses. Sure, they found an active
life outside of school!
There were
a few medical student societies here at McGill, most notably the
Osler Medical Aid Foundation, the Student's Association for Medical
Aid, the Medical Students for Social Responsibility and the McGill
Women in Medicine Society. I attended the first MSSR meeting and
it felt like I went into some women's club- there was only 2 other
guys there amongst some 15 girls. Do the words "social responsibility"
mean anything to guys?
I didn't recall which society was running the show every week, but there was a movie series on such topics as mind and body healing, alternative medicine, social dimensions of medicine, etc. Not surprisingly, I found myself stranded amongst a predominantly female audience.
I also recalled a little meeting where a liver-transplanted patient gave a heartfelt talk on her experience. Once again I was there wondering: "Do guys really care?"
"The most
common criticism made at present by older practitioners is that
young graduates have been taught a great deal about the mechanisms
of disease, but very little about the practice of medicine-- or,
to put it more bluntly, they are too "scientific"
and do not know how to take care of patients," so I read
in the book called Dominant Issues in Medical Sociology.
There are sensitive and caring doctors practicing medicine, but I contend that these individuals had a humanistic orientation before they come to medical school- and they, I suppose, are mostly the charming ladies.
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