Read Me/Disclaimer

Read Me/Disclaimer: This is a non-political/socio-political blog. It's a running tale of my Saudi Arabian adventure, great, good, bad, and ugly. It is uncensored, and I don't really care what you think of it, read it or don't. I don't care. I did not decide to do this as a means to an end, but rather to document the means with which I occupied my time while waiting for my end... All that being said, I'm an American Expat in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The opportunity to help build this system and the salary that accompanied it were to good to pass up.-Geoff

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"The views presented here are just the views of some asshole named Geoff, they are not necessarily the views of my employer, my co-workers, my family or anybody else. First hand knowledge and second hand accounts were used to compile the information. These are not scientific facts and figures. These views are not necessarily supported, endorsed or even appreciated by the KSA the USA or any other country for that matter and the author makes absolutely no claim that they are."**

Sunday, June 24, 2012

I Smell Sex and...Medicine?

No actually I don't, and neither should you.  "Sex and Candy" "Sex and Chocolate", "Sex and Money", Sex and Love", "Sex and Oysters" "Sex and Violence".  You'll find a reference citing either a scientific or popular culture correlation between all of these things.  However you won't find one citing any correlation between Sex and Medicine as well you shouldn't!

Now I "toe a fine line" in this blog and sometimes...I toe over it...OK, OK sometimes I jump on the other side of the line and dance in a circle, but I'm not trying to that here, I'm just saying that there should be absolutely NO correlation between Sex and Healthcare and in that spirit, there really shouldn't be any problem educating male healthcare students alongside female healthcare students, and preparing both of them for the actual practice of delivering emergency care to the sick and injured. Regardless of culture!  I am a Critical Care Paramedic, am I expected to watch a woman die rather than come to her aid?  If the answer to that is yes, we have problems. 

It should also be noted that many of my students and other students across the Kingdom plan to further their education in the West when they graduate.  Either the US, Australia or the UK.  It should further be noted that some places will ask you to list your strengths and weaknesses.  I had an employer that required this of all Paramedics.  They wanted to know what you were strong in, what you were weak in, what you had never seen and what scared you.  Can you imagine one of my students arriving to the interview and saying "well I've worked a lot of trauma calls, a lot of diabetes calls and quite a few cardiac arrests.  I have never however seen a woman's body, nor have I done a 12 or 15 lead EKG on a woman, nor have I ever physically assessed a female patient...That would fly with the interviewers (some of which are SURE to be female) about as well as a lead duck.  

However, from what I've seen if my students work even 1 year before going on, they won't have to say such a thing!  Women are not blindly shoved into ambulances with no care given and driven to the hospital.  This IS a first world country after all.  Therefore it stands to reason that if they will be expected to perform such skills in real life, they should learn in training how to get over the awkwardness of palpating the head, chest, abdomen, pelvis and extremities of a woman or Vice Versa, with a woman assessing a man.  Maybe more importantly though, they need to understand that their is NO such thing as a "hot" or "sexy" or "attractive" patient.  We don't have those, we just have patients.  Healthcare and sex or thoughts of sex should never be intertwined. 

I don't have much more of a point today, but this needed to be said and I've said it until I'm blue in the face at work, so I'd thought I'd say it here.  And students:  Why would I be blue in the face from talking ???

3 comments:

  1. because you talk too much ?! O2-15 liters/min. via nonrebreather should work :)

    i see your point and will aware of the two being separated, usually healthy nice females dont call the big white taxi, mostly they are grand-ma's
    but indeed there will be those "calls" and all you have to remember is " there is NO such thing as a "hot" or "sexy" or "attractive" patient. We don't have those, we just have patients."

    good line by the way should be in a textbook :)

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    Replies
    1. -5 points for saying I talk to much, +5 points for the correct treatment. So you come out even...Thanks for the compliment!

      And true, maybe healthy females don't normally call the ambulance here, but they do sometimes and should only be regarded as patients.

      Thanks for the comment and thanks for reading!

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