I finished med school at 23 when you could do that and wasn't in private practice til my late 20s. Even back then, this happened less than 1% of the time. Average age of entering private practice is 30-35 after residencies, fellowships, etc.

Let's say this gal is a genius (questionable from her letter) and finished H.S. at 16. Undergrad 4 years, med school 4 years, internship and residency 3-4 years. Best case scenario is that she STARTS practicing at 27.

I think the letter writer is either lying about her age, or is not an M.D./D.O. at all or a resident/medical student rotating in a private practice. In such a case, people would be right to question her lack of experience.

Prudy needs to be a little more suspicious of those letters.

Prudie is also wrong about her diagnosis and treatment plan. She falsely attributes ageism and jealousy to sexism especially since the other parties are female. When I was a young doctor, particularly in my internship, there were a lot of raised eyebrows, resentful older docs, especially since I looked 17. However, this was understandable. People value experience in a doctor, and you have to prove yourself.

It is absolutely WRONG to be confrontational in this situation except on the issue of being second guessed in front of patients. She is not is a position of power. She needs to pick her battles carefully.

The bottom line for most young physicians, especially in training, is that the best option is to suck it up and move on. Confrontation generally leads to heartache. Medicine is not like the rest of society where the squeaky wheel gets the grease. More like the nail that stands out gets pounded down.

The good news is that she will get older and the problem will go away. The bad news is that she will get older and one day closer to death. Enjoy the advantages of youth while you have them.

she didn't do a residency. (and maybe she's 29 but likes to think of that as mid-twenties.. who knows)

so, she's young, and because of this she's allowed to be bullied by the nurses?

she's clearly being disrespected. And yes, she could be making bad calls/prescriptions/whatever, but the nurse should hot have contradicted her in front of the patient, making the patient doubt the dr's credibility. THis doesn't mean that she shouldn't ever be contradicted. this would be stupid. but not in a way that's disrespectful.

and all of that bullshit about the medical profession being different from others IS the old-timey way of thinking about it that prudie says is dying out. sorry. treating people with respect, nomatter their rank, age, gender is the right thing to do. even in the hollowed halls of a medical office.

prudie's advice is correct. if she allows this to continue, there'll be no end of it. (but you say it's OK b/c she'll get older eventually and be respected? so only about two decades of harassment to go through?)

The other possibility is that the nurses simply are more competent than the young doctor. Wouldn't be the first time it happened. Never take any story at face value.

While there can be a multitude of different things going on behind the scenes, we need to look at this from a business POV. There is a heirarchy in a business: underling, middle management, upper management, etc. I am going to guess from the letter that the LW is somewhere around middle management. As an employee under someone, there is one cardinal rule: Do NOT contradict/undermine said boss's decision in front of the client. It's in extremely poor taste to do it to an employee, but it is plain stupid to do it to your boss. If you disagree, have a private word with them, or someone above them if applicable. It's very simple. I think the LW should pick her battles, such as not addressing the smaller Dr/Mrs problem, but she should not let the undermining behavior slide. The more she ignores it, the worse it will get. If she ignores it, she is reinforcing to the nurses that they can get away with it.

Because you haven't the foggiest.

The young doc could have finished high school at 12, and gone to college. There are other kids like that, they're brilliant but they haven't had the opportunity to acquire social skills....

Messy One, I think you have issues. You are seeing demons behind every corner and it doesn't allow you to define circumstances. Why is this a sexism problem? The "perps" are female. It may be jealousy, it may be ageism, it may be degreeism, it may be her incompetence, but why is it sexism? Why do you think the nurses and staff would not do this if the allegedly mid twenties doc were male and looked like Doogie Howser? Even the writer herself related this to age, not sex.

Female nurses treat male doctors differently than they treat female doctors. It's as simple as that. As a man, you would never have experienced the sort of nonsense the women visit upon each other, so you are not qualified to comment on the issue. Age isn't the issue, either. Young male doctors get treated well, too. Certainly they are not questioned in front of patients the way this female doctor has reported.

I never said I approved or disapproved either way. I do know that if the sort of insubordination that was going on in that office happened during my watch, the nurse (male or female) would be history before the lunch hour and her check would be mailed to her. Nurses may be important, and they certainly think they are, but they are NOT physicians and in a clinic setting, they are only there to make things run smoothly, which means shutting up and doing their jobs.

If you think that means I have "issues", then I shudder to think what kind of bullshit you're willing to tolerate. Your office is a business, not a social club, not a "family", but a business. It's like any other office - if someone in insubordinate, rude to superiors, and questions their conclusions in front of a client, then they need to be fired.

I've observed the same thing as you have, MessyOne. Women will sometimes perpetrate the worst forms of sexism on other women: in medicine, business, academia, not to mention the hardships the first female cops encountered from office staff as well as from male cops' spouses.

It's not only in our society. Just think how badly young daughters-in-law are treated by their new mother- in- law in India and traditionally in other places. The mother in law is handing down the abuse she herself suffered (it used to be the case in rural Greece, but luckily that has changed). Also, it's most of the time women who enforce the infubilation and cliterectomies in countries where it is still practiced (even though it's been officially outlawed in those countries). They do it because otherwise no man would marry the girl --so it's still a man's issue.

Women often internalized sexism, just as members of other oppressed groups often internalize racism, classism, castism etc and there are always some individuals among them who are eager to enforce the rules, even the unspoken ones. I suspect these are the sort of persons who would be the most oppressive if they were part of the group with the most power.

As for nurses and docs, it does seem to be changing, so I was surprised to read the letter but I assumed she is located in a rural area where MDs and hospitals are scarce. There are so many young female doctors these days and I have not observed any sign of disrespect from female nurses, on the contrary. (I have a daughter with a chronic illness and have some health issues myself so I seem to spend a lot of time in various hospitals and doctor's offices). As to the LW she shouldn't tolerate this sort of disrespect from the nurses, particularly in that it is bound to also harm her patients....

(by the way Messy, this is off topic, but are you familiar with Doc Gurley's blog? It's in the San Francisco Chronicle, also you can just google the blog. Some of her posts are the funniest, as well as very instructive. My favorite one is "The Lost Tampon Video" (accompanied by the rock song of the same name --yes there is one!). It is hilarious and a must for all of us females!)

Oh please. The hazing that older male docs perp on defenseless interns, especially male, is almost as bad as the abuse that Dr. House joyfully engages in on the TV show. Stop making everything a sex issue. It is a general abuse of power issue. If anything, young women in medicine get a break from the sadistic older men in the profession because they are afraid of a lawsuit. Answer a question. You would you trust more? A nurse with 20 years of experience or an M.D. with 2? As an M.D. I can tell you I go with experience not title.

You seem not to have read the letter. To clarify - this young, female doctor is trying to cope with her staff - the nurses in the clinic - deliberately undermining her and questioning her judgment in front of patients. These are firing offenses. The letter mentions nothing about other doctors, only nurses.

I ask you again, would you take that kind of shit from a nurse? You know, if you had a nurse standing in the room with you while you were doing a gynie who said, "Doctor, you're full of shit. She's clearly not pregnant." That's what's happening here. No? Gee, I wonder why?

jobmd:

Oh please. The hazing that older male docs perp on defenseless interns, especially male, is almost as bad as the abuse that Dr. House joyfully engages in on the TV show. Stop making everything a sex issue. It is a general abuse of power issue. If anything, young women in medicine get a break from the sadistic older men in the profession because they are afraid of a lawsuit. Answer a question. You would you trust more? A nurse with 20 years of experience or an M.D. with 2? As an M.D. I can tell you I go with experience not title.

I don't have an M.D., but my mother does - and more than twenty years of experience in practice to boot. She'd say that yes, female doctors do experience sexism, both from nurses and other doctors, and from both men and women.

Of course, the types of crap are different depending on who's dishing it out. With nurses, a female doctor has to work harder to establish her authority. With male doctors, sometimes, well...they don't say (or imply) that she has no place in the profession because she's a woman, but they do the kinds of stupid, oblivious things that people do when they honestly think they're too smart to be sexists.

jobmd, I can't believe you're an MD! Of course anyone with a bit of common sense would trust a doctor with 2 years experience over a nurse with 20. The doc is the one qualified to make diagnoses, referrals, tests, treatment --including surgeries. A young doc in particular would probably be up on the latest. This is not to diminish the work nurses do in hospital settings. It has been shown that nursing skills and the ratio of nurse per patient makes a difference in survival rates during hospitalizations. Nursing is another medical specialty, it requires as much intelligence and most of the time more patience, stamina and tolerance as is required of an MD but those qualities are used for other purposes and require other sorts of skills and less specialized knowledge.

It would depend on the circumstances, but I don't think trusting an experienced nurse over a novice doctor shows a lack of common sense.

Experience matters a lot - especially in something as varied and seemingly random as the medical field. The nurse would have seen many more patients, how they were treated, and the result of that treatment than the doctor. I think a reasonable arguement can be made that those experiences would lead a person to trust the person who had them over someone who has more information, but without much experience on how it actually works.

Not sure that the being up on the latest is really an asset (or if that is even the case) if the doctor in question has no idea how it works in the wild. (Not sure I'd even equate the "latest" with the best when it comes to the medical field. I'd offer prescription drugs released based more on patents than treatment as an example....)