Was I U to tell a doctor she’ll understand when she’s a mum?

Kind of more worried about this 4 year old zooming about on a bike without their mum around?!

I think she’s probably fresh out of training where she’s been taught to be scientific. She would indeed wear her ability to block out the noise in order to see the underlying medical problem more clearly, as a matter of pride.

She clearly needs training on her bedside manner, or just generally live a little more to learn when to say what to whom. Or not.

YANBU to have said what you said in the jest of the moment, especially given your past. But I wouldn’t repeat it and especially not to her. She’s young, she’ll learn (hopefully).

This ^ 100%
Don’t mention it anymore. You made clumsy comment in response to her clumsy comment but you were understandably upset so I would leave it there.
Hopefully she will improve her conversation skills.
Hope injured child is ok.

Would you rather assume irrationality and be wrong? You don’t need to trust people to be rational to take parental concern into account alongside other evidence. As a PP noted, the evidence is strong that this is best practice.

Well you would want a doctor to be calm in such a situation so I don’t know why you felt the need to say that. She was a bit twattish though describing concerned parents as over anxious.

My first thought as I read it was about doctors saying to me they always trust Mums' judgement when my kids have been ill.

I read it as her saying she ignores and dismisses the anxious parents and screaming kids but it seems like others have taken it she meant she stays calm when the parents are anxious.

For what it's worth, I'm a healthcare professional and my first response was that you're not being unreasonable. My job often involves having to stay calm when things get crazy and I didn't interpret what she said as that, I interpreted it more as a bumptious newly qualified doctor thinking they know it all. Could still be the calm thing expressed poorly though

Also although the title says 'when', the actual post says you said "if you ever become a mum" which I think makes a difference.

You weren’t wrong to call her out on her thoughtless comment, you just said slightly the wrong thing. No big deal.

I would find that patronising and a bit discriminatory.

You wouldn't say that to a man or an older woman.

And how would you know and what business is it of yours how many surviving children a medical professional has or hasn't given birth to?

She might not want to have children, or she might be unable to have them, so your comment was out of order for those reasons alone.

Please don't tell anybody else something this callous. You could be speaking to someone who's infertile.

The doctor said something clearly unsympathetic and patronising and got a strong reply. If you’d said it out of context YWBU but in that context I think it was an appropriate thing to say. She’s lucky the mum didn’t hear….

Oh ok so because she hasn’t had children her degree in medicine is utter bollocks. Ooopz guess I need fo
asl for my degree to be discounted

Sounds like you were both in the wrong to be honest. Your comment was a bit out of order but I can see why you were annoyed.
Yes, remaining calm under pressure and not panicking in unpleasant situation is a key quality of a good doctor, but you just do it, there's no need to announce it to the world. It is also perfectly possible to calmly deal with distressed patients, relatives and bystanders without being dismissive of them.
If she's newly qualified she will in fact not have much experience at all and it's possible that she was nervous and trying rather clumsily to appear confident -and maybe in fact to reassure herself. I have decades of experience in Intensive Care Medicine and really am used to dealing with horrific injuries and very distressed people but it is still quite stressful as a hospital doctor to be asked to deal with something in the community when you have no equipment etc and people have high expectations of you because you're a doctor. Certainly as a recent graduate I would have not felt particularly well equipped to deal with an injured child alone. I'd like to think I'd have been polite though!
She shouldn't have spoken to you like that, and if I heard any of my staff say something like that we'd definitely be having a conversation about it after the event, but giving her the benefit of the doubt, it may actually have been anxiety and and inexperience speaking. It's not acceptable though. Hopefully she'll improve her communication skills with time.
Incidentally, aside from my work experience I'm a cycling coach and race organiser. A damaged helmet after a fall, even in the absence of any visible injury is enough to trigger the concussion protocol and pull a rider out of the event, so it is very reasonable to be concerned about a child with a badly damaged helmet. I hope the youngster is ok.

I think it's fairly obvious what the doctor meant and that your comment was unnecessary.

My child had cancer too and I know exactly what you mean but they also stayed professional and calm which is absolutely vital, especially if a parent is struggling to stay calm.

I think you were unnecessarily rude. I’m sure you were trying to look out for the child and their mum.

but from what you’ve written, it comes across as you rescuing the child after their accident and providing better care than a qualified doctor. And then you telling the doctor that they weren’t fully up to the job.

I agree

Absolutely, it’s very individual.

That’s very interesting

Yabvu. No good doctor is going collapse in hysteria when confronted with a patient who needs attention. They will be calm and do the job they trained for

Sorry, am I the only one wondering what the fuck a 4 year old was doing on a bike with no adult supervision? Or was the OP supposed to be supervising him?

That aside, I think the doctor's remark may have been badly phrased but it's pretty obvious what she meant, and you were BVU to say what you said.

People are either empathetic and can understand another person's or child's point of view or they aren't. Plenty of parents don't really 'get' their children and plenty of non parents do.

I went through infertility and, as a teacher, still remember a member of staff saying no one could really understand children if they weren't a parent, which I found hurtful at the time. That's nonsense. When I did have children, it wasn't my understanding of children that changed but my view of schools, as a parent, certainly shifted a little.

Bit of an arsehole comment.
If she is saying " when a child is screaming, covered in blood and we know what the cause is, I can ignore that and focus on the task in hand".

What a twatish thing to say to another woman.

Honestly I think you were very harsh and also rude. She was trying to explain that she stays calm. Also doctors have to weigh facts. My child has some disabilities. I went to doctor and explained what was happening and I was a bit upset. He said lets weigh it all on the balance of facts. I honestly had just got a bit off topic.lol I appreciated his balanced response and kindness in dealing with me. I have also been in an emergency situation with a doctor and had misdiagnosised another of my children only a week before. I told him in a very frantic way that he was completely wrong and that he didn't know what he was talking about. He calmly said Im sorry I was wrong last week but Im right today. I sat there in shock. My child if I had left it another hour would have died. I was always thankful to that doctor. They are human that taught me. He genuinely cared for my child. He did everything he could to save her and he did. My advice is give grace and don't lecture her. Life will do that for her.

That was a pretty nasty thing to say. For all you know she may want to be a parent but hasn't been able to for whatever reason. I totally see where she is coming from, when you are dealing with trauma on a day to day you do, to a point need to dull yourself down to it or you wouldn't be able to function. It doesn't mean you can't listen to someone advocating for their child. It just means you don't get caught up in the fear and emotions that parents will naturally feel. There's a line between caring and having poor professional boundaries. You need a doctor who can do both.

It sounds like a very stressful situation and I don't think either of you have come off well but no I absolutely wouldn't be following this up with her. I think you were a bit out of line with what you said already though I also think it makes sense given what your family has been through that it's struck a raw nerve. I think the urge to follow it up is more about you than her.