Gender Bias Part I

The Radiologist held up the request form and his hand was shaking. He was reading the form as he would a X-ray, against the light of the ceiling. I made a mental note that radiology was a discipline I would never consider, given that the radiologists I've met so far, half a year into my Housemanship, were nothing short of coo coo.

"You can go and tell your consultant there is no way I will do this!!! This is ridiculous!!! There is no urgency!!!!" He bellowed.

I wasn't particularly flustered given that this sort of treatment was a day in day out affair to me by now. It was just that I could not stand his stale cigarette smelling breath in my face. I uttered some apology and had wanted to leave. After all, I've done my part. The consultant wanted me to kamikaze and I had kamikazed (君要臣死 臣不得不死). The Radiologist had a rejection rate of almost a 100% for urgent requests and there was a 100% risk of getting at least an angry stare of disapproval if not the more common hairdryer treatment of being yelled at.

Unfortunately, he was not done with me yet.

"And it is not COOP LOOP, you....... It's COPE LOOP!!!!! You think chicken coop?!!! You......"

Ummm, the dark dingy radiology department did somewhat remind me of a chicken coop.... Freudian slip, my bad.

He took out a marker, drew several lines across "coop" and then wrote the word "cope" across the whole of the A4 sized request form. As he handed the form back to me, he hesitated for a while. Realizing that the nurses might misconstrue that he had agreed to the procedure since his distinct handwriting (and his distinct stale cigarette smell) was spluttered across the request, he tore the form into two before giving it back to me.

As I was to exit the radio department, my pager unsurprisingly rang and I had to make a call back to the ward. A female house officer strolled in and waved a big hello to the Radiologist. His deep frown turned into a crooked smile and they started chatting. I wouldn't say that his hands was all over her, but they were close enough. She then took out a request form in a by-the-way manner and he happily signed it without even so much as to glance on it (his eyes were on [the wrong parts of] her).

I waited for the female HO outside. She was a good friend.

"Wanna go quickly grab some dinner before going on-call?" I asked her and she nodded.

"Wah you damn power. You know, I'm still a 100% reject rate!"

"Next time wear a skirt la!" She said.

Moral of the story: unless you are wearing a skirt, don't expect your busy fellow male HO to wait for you for dinner.