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

As in my earlier post re my very unwell child, re sepsis…. Would I have preferred a doctor who joined me in my tears and panic while they were putting my baby on oxygen, cannulas into their feet and preparing for a lumbar puncture… or the clinical calm of “this is what we’re doing, we have this ”…?

I'd want an excellent Dr who.provided me with optimal care. I'd prefer a good communicator and tolerate a poor communicator in the short term. If the poor communicator didn't share information with me and was rude or off hand in follow up clinics, I'd regard them as a poor doctor, despite potentially saving my life. For follow up cardiology I'd probably pay to see a better cardiologist who spoke to me as their equal.

You were very rude and it was an unnecessary comment.

I’m confused - do you want a doctor who gets emotionally involved ?

Yes you were U, and rude to boot.

It was a poor choice of words " to ignore the vibe" whilst she needs to remain calm, professional and focused, providing reassurance to the parents, to alleviate their anxiety is significant to any treatments that she needs to administer to her patient, who would likely be anxious as a result of their parents.

Well yes, you probably came across as a bit of a prat, but it sounds like she’s used to it. I don’t think a doctor has to have experienced every illness in order to be able to treat it and they need to have thick skins to cope with people insulting them and questioning their professionalism.

Okay but if you have a heart attack would you rather a great doctor (who may not be concerned about emotions) or one that is very empathetic but not very good.

Surely doctors have to keep an emotional distance from their jobs?

The large chunk of doctors I know personally completely lack any social intelligence.

Some of the stuff my ex (gp) used to come out with, I couldn’t tell if he had some undiagnosed SEN or just plain nasty.

She's a newly qualified and inexperienced doctor who happens to have the emotional empathy of a gnat. Lots and lots of.people who are clever enough to qualify as doctors are arrogant twerps. There's one in most GP practices and on most clinical teams.

The ones capable of learning how to communicate do so with experience, those who aren't continue to be poor communicators and often come across as arrogant.

It puzzles me that there's an expectation that all doctors are exceptional. They are humans like everyone else. There are good ones, bad ones, polite ones, impolite ones, fundamentally nice ones and fundamentally nasty ones.

@Calmondeck hope the child is ok.

That was a pathetic thing to say. People don’t become imbued with a higher level of knowledge just because they have a child.

The woman has completed many years of study - how patronising to imply she doesn’t understand. So should she only treat adults? She understands the mechanics of the human body, she doesn’t need to know the various levels of emotional competence that parents have

And as a PP said, ‘when’ you’re a mother makes you even more unreasonable. Perhaps she doesn’t want to have children? Perhaps she can’t have children? Either way it’s reductive.

But today I found myself telling a newly graduated doctor that she won’t understand until she’s a mother. A bit presumptuous of you OP. Not everyone wants to or can become mothers. Maybe this is something you don’t understand.

I’m 40, became a mother at 37. I’m just as calm now in situations I was before.

About 4 years ago, our friends little boy jumped off of the slide wrong and broke his elbow. My husband and I kept calm, did a makeshift sling and dad and stepmum took him to the hospital. Once he left I let my panic out.

I have had things happen, (not as drastic) with my daughter, and stayed just as calm in the moment. Some people just can. I’m also not a doctor.

It was a very charged moment, neither of you said the absolutely appropriate thing for the circumstances. Real life can be a bit messy like that. Hopefully the child is Okay?

I’ve had so many people over the years say “you’ll understand when you become a mother” about various things in life. In situations like
“Oh I couldn’t watch that film. You’ll understand why when you become a mother”.
“You’ll understand what tired really means when you become a mother!”
“You’ll care more about your health when you become a mother!”
”You don’t know what love is until you become a mother!”

I looked forward to being a mother for as long as I could remember. People saying the “when you become a mother” both excited me and upset me in a weird way. It upset me because I felt like I wasn’t in some kind of “club”. Like I was immature and stupid for watching a certain film but not “understanding” why it would upset mothers.
I was also kind of excited to experience this amazing thing that everyone told me was like nothing else! I mean you love people right but apparently NOTHING is like loving a child and it’s so amazing!

Anyway turns out I couldn’t have kids. First miscarriage at 29 followed by loads more. I look back on all those people that said those things to me (and still do because I’m not quite out of the age where I could in theory have a child) and I cannot tell you how much it upsets me. It IS implying the person is somehow either too stupid or immature to understand something that only superior mothers do. It can make non parents feel like they’re not part of a special “club” that only those in it can understand certain things. You just end up feeling stupid when whatever you’ve been talking about is cut off by a version of “when you’ve grown up you won’t feel like that”.

There’s plenty of other ways of putting a point across without ever using the term “you’ll understand when you become a mother”.

Doctor here (and mum). I think she was insensitive and that what you said will probably have given her useful pause for thought. It's easy to be arrogant when you're newly qualified and inexperienced (and it's probably self-protective against all the horrible things you see tbh) but you can't "ignore the vibe" as a doctor, no. And that phrase alone is so dismissive and condescending that I think you said the right thing, quite measured of you really

YABU. If doctors were as emotional as mothers, we'd never get any care that would go beyond screaming and crying. They need to be detached, to a point, to get a job done. So, yes, YABU.

I don’t know why she worded it that way, it’s strange. She should have just reassured you both and got to work checking him over.

I'm currently this situation with DH and you have to have a degree of detachment to deal with the problems. You were patronising - you don't know her situation.

Oh no OP. Cringing for you

I would not say that to anyone. It's quite offensive. It's saying you are not empathetic enough now, and it's also saying they need to have children to become more so.

I don't even think it's about empathy, it's about being able to detach and remain calm in an emergency. I can do this, have done though various medical emergencies with my DM, DH and DC. It's nothing to do with being a mother, it's just an ability. My DH and DF both fall apart in emergencies but I am OK.

She sounds like a patronising unhelpful twit, but your comment was still unreasonable. She may not ever want children or even be unable to have them.

You would definitely be unreasonable to bring it up again should you see her or the neighbour, just let it go.

Actually I think you are overthinking it. I would take from that what she means is that she isn’t emotional in these types of situations just like a doctor should be. She can ignore stressed out parents and their emotions in order to assess the situation. It doesn’t mean she’s going to ignore what the parents are saying just the stressed vibe.

im not a doctor and I react like this too in these situations. My husband had a terminal illness and I was able to zone out of all emotions so that i could deal with the pressing issues being asked by me of the doctors. Like you family thought I was unreasonable but the tasks in hand needed to be dealt with practically and in a calm manner.

A good doctor stays calm in the face of parental/relative concern (I'm not going to use 'hysteria' because it makes it sound like it's completely irrational). A great doctor assesses the level of concern alongside the objective facts and deals with both the needs of their patient and the concern of the relatives.

When we presented to A&E, the medical team were unconcerned about DH. I knew he was more unwell than they thought he was, and pointed out that, when well, he has a low resting HR so his 'mildly elevated' HR was actually very elevated. I also pointed out that he has been to the GP twice in 10 years, both times for injury. Never for illness. I am an ex ITU nurse, to be fair, so I have an 'ill-dar'.

He sat quietly in a chair while they did all their tests. No fuss. They suddenly swooped in to move him to a trolley and have a Consultant see him because he had severe pneumonia. They had missed the fact that his fingers were yellow, they couldn't get an O2 sats reading because his circulation was shutting down in his peripheries, and his lactate was high on his blood gas. It was only once his CRP came back at over 600 that they realised he was really unwell. They hadn't seen the big picture.

Nobody needs a panicking doctor, but a concerned parent should alert a doctor to the fact that either the child is more unwell than they seem to be, or the parent needs reassurance.

I work in healthcare and you do need a clear head, and a calm demeanour to deal with anxious patients, families, etc. You have to establish facts, and it can be hard to do that when people are flapping and fussing, so yes, to an extent you do have to sidestep that, and you do need to be able to operate calmly and efficiently even when there are screaming children, crying, shouting, etc. Nobody wants to see an anxious, panicking HCP. You need to be the one who isn't panicking. I've had to speak firmly and sometimes a bit sharply to parents in my time to get the information needed to assess a child's mental health needs in a time limited situation, because if I didn't, that child wouldn't get the right help. Sometimes I had to tell parents quite bluntly to put their phones away and focus on the assessment and whoever was messaging for updates would have to wait.

The skill set I've just described is, however, different to ignoring reasonable parental concerns or failing to consult parents regarding their child's needs or comfort. I think perhaps she's explained it poorly and it's got conflated.