Reflections on Doctors by Ratner Terry

Author:Ratner, Terry [Ratner, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kaplan Trade
Published: 2009-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

Nurse Cherry Ames and Dr. Fortune Marry

Paula Sergi, RN, MFA

I USUALLY WAIT UNTIL I know someone quite well before revealing that I am married to a doctor. My reluctance to discuss my husband’s profession is multifaceted and includes a Midwestern sensibility of modesty.

There’s also the fact that I’ve lived through the second wave of feminism and like to believe that my own work is of greater interest than my husband’s profession. I imagine that there was a time when the opposite was true; that women would readily announce their Mrs. Doctor status, savoring the prestige it afforded them.

Maybe it’s because I’m a nurse and am biased, but these days I perceive a growing distrust and even disdain for the medical profession. The mere mention of the word physician brings up images of headstrong, bossy, egocentric people who have little respect for their coworkers. I know because I worked as a student nurse and staff nurse long before meeting my husband.

His career choice would have worked against him at the beginning of our courtship had his intelligence, warmth, ability to cook, and love of the arts not been immediately obvious. So it’s hurtful to me to listen to grumbling and doctor-bashing; that is, unless the conversation addresses all aspects of healthcare reform.

There are quirky conditions that surround the doctor-nurse marriage. The most obvious is the quick mental leap to the stereotypical relationship made famous by novels from the 1940s and 1950s. Old concepts linger, and they are not flattering to anyone. Book covers featured a doctor looking lecherously at a pretty blond nurse. Remember Nurse Cherry Ames and Dr. Joseph Fortune? Despite her dedication and cleverness, she seemed to always be under his influence. The literature informing contemporary culture has promoted the notion that the most a nurse can hope for is to be the object of a male physician’s lust. This bit of fiction masks the rich give-and-take that characterizes relationships between nurses and physicians, at work and at home.

Other ramifications are equally infuriating, like the situation I encountered one day when I was late for my son’s sporting event and took a seat next to another mother. “I was working the immunization clinic,” I explained.

“What do you do there?” she asked.

“I give the shots.”

“Did your husband teach you to do that?” she wondered aloud.

Never mind my BS degree or ten years as a public-health nurse. The idea that just being married to a physician would allow me to be on the payroll of the local public health department infuriated me, despite my understanding that naiveté and ignorance were at the heart of that woman’s comment.

Such ignorance is not wholly uncommon. We live in a small community and there’s a weird curiosity about doctors’ lives that hovers ominously. Though 40,000 people is not quite Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, we have a large population at and above retirement age. Some really do listen to the police scanner as a hobby. When my husband was hospitalized for a kidney stone, the rumors included that he had suffered a heart attack brought on by my having left him.

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