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Ask before lifting the gown to check the catheter. Use a sheet to keep the genitals covered before you pull the gown up to examine the abdomen. Ask for an OK before bringing a student into the room and properly introduce them, including what exactly they are. Kick anyone out that doesn’t need to be there don’t turn it into a spectator sport. Knock and ask if it is OK to enter the room. What can you do to ease the embarrassment, or at least not make it worse? Ask him if he’d prefer your male co-worker do the intimate procedure. Many men have mastered the “it doesn’t bother me” disguise and you won’t detect anything at all. If he maintains a tense silence, he’s just plain embarrassed. If he jokes about his exposure, he’s trying to hide his embarrassment from you. The problem is that training all too often starts with the premise that men have no modesty. They’re just doing their job how they’ve been trained. Such a powerful message from the school is not forgotten.įemale nurses and techs do not intentionally embarrass their male patients. This is what they have been doing since their first sports physical in Middle School when the female NP hired by the school (with a female assistant by her side) does a genital exam. To acknowledge embarrassment only serves to amplify it. Males are socialized from childhood that when faced with an embarrassing medical exam or procedure to “man up” making believe it doesn’t bother them. Societal norms say men are not supposed to be modest that it is a sign of weakness. Most are afraid to admit it because doing so is not “manly”. Correct on the second, but only because you didn’t know he was modest. He is the only naked person in the room and it is his exposure that he is concerned about, not your comfort.īut most guys have no modesty you say it is a rarity to encounter a modest guy. That you are comfortable with the man’s exposure is irrelevant. What you don’t know is that he may have been fearful of repeating a particularly bad experience. And then give an example or two of how you do that.īeing empathetic in this manner will satisfy many modesty concerns. Know that I take your privacy seriously and that your exposure will be kept to the absolute minimum”. Better to instead respond with “I understand your concern and wish I could accommodate your request but we don’t have any male staff. It actually works most of the time but it greatly amplifies the patient’s embarrassment.
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Why won’t men speak up? Because all too often when he does he gets “you don’t have anything I haven’t seen”, “don’t be silly”, or “we’re all professionals here”.īasic bullying and shaming techniques are intended to shut down the conversation rather than acknowledge the concern and then speak to it. Why won’t the medical world acknowledge the issue? Because they’d then be obligated to do something about it. Why is this? Partly because it is the elephant in the room that the medical world does not want to discuss and partly because men are afraid to speak up.
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Interestingly, when articles are written about men not going to the doctor, modesty is never listed as one of the reasons. Most men are somewhere in-between the two extremes. On the other end are men who forego healthcare rather than have female nurses and techs for intimate care. The healthcare system is fine as is for them. On one end of the spectrum are those guys who have no modesty whatsoever. Why do we expect men to have testicular ultrasounds by female techs? Why do urology practices with predominantly male patients only have female nurses & techs for cystoscopies and other very intimate procedures? Why the double standard?Īs with any human trait, there is a continuum when we’re talking about modesty. We don’t expect women to have male techs for their mammograms. The problem for men is lack of options at the nursing and tech level, where most intimate care occurs. The relative male-female parity amongst physician ranks generally affords both men and women with sufficient options. Gender neutral works for the caregivers perhaps, but oftentimes not for the men. “Medicine is gender neutral” is a true enough statement if by that we mean female nurses and techs are comfortable providing virtually all of the intimate care for men and women.