On the Job

[muscadine]

The Nurses and M.A.'s all have to call my new associate "Dr. Del Mar." This amuses me to no end. She is a real doctor, in the sense that she has a degree in medicine from her home country (though she can't practice in the US, which I think is a shame). So it isn't that they call her that, but why they call her that. Everyone in the clinic has been calling her by her first name (as we researchers continue to do), and this change was not her idea. Rather, the clinic we're doing our studies in has been giving the research department problems. So, the research higher-ups must have come up with it as a way to help instill "the proper respect" towards our right to be in the clinic. It's all a political power play. Most amusing. Next I suppose I'll be "Mr. Crockett." :P

Beyond the "office politics," which are a regular amusement around here, this clinic is an endless source of interesting anecdotal data for those with a social-science-oriented mind. Especially in the realm of race, class, and gender. This makes a lot of sense when you realize I'm in the OBGYN clinic of a public hospital in downtown Memphis (if you are familiar with Memphis, that is). Yes, it's a virtual social science wonderland. The doctors and residents are overwhelmingly white or Asian (and the ultrasound tech staff was completely white until a couple of months ago). Meanwhile, the nurses and M.A.'s are even more overwhelmingly black. And the patients are generally poor and/or minority (mostly black).

The doctor-nurse interactions are the most interesting to watch, because they are so socially loaded. There are a few (especially older) doctors with some really "good old boy" attitudes. Very paternalistic and condescending, though nothing overtly racist (and it may very well have nothing to do with that, since "paternalistic and condescending" describes a lot of doctors in general ;) ). In any case, the nurses hate it. You can see it in their eyes...and so can the doctors. But, of course, they also want to keep their jobs, so nothing is said or done to the doctors face-to-face. But they can get away with a little more as concerns the residents...

Anyways, very interesting.