Nikki Lee Health

I was a junior nursing student in college when I wrote this paper after a clinical rotation in labor and delivery at Bellevue Hospital. I am newly 20;  young and so upset by what I had to see. Not one single nursing instructor ever talked to the nursing students about the brutality they had to watch.  This paper was received, and marked as having fulfilled the assignment, without one single comment, either written or verbal,  by my instructor.

“I saw numerous exhibitions of male cruelness and contempt for women in my. rotation in labor and delivery; I speculated on the possible reasons for this behavior (may men had to show their superiority towards women) but the more I thought about it, the more I ame to the conclusion expressed in this paper.

There were two major ways that male doctors were untherapeutic to women in labor and delivery. They would strip basic human dignity from these women by repeated vafinal exmas and/or gross exposure. It seemed that every man walking by an occupied labor room would come in, put on a glove, throw bak the sheet shove his hand up. her vagina, and then leave without replacing the sheet or so much as a “by your leave”.  I couldn’t see the reason for so many. vaginal examinations; but if so many are necessary, it would seem that the doctors could be more gentle and give a polite explanation or at least introduce themselves before performing their sanctified manual rape.

Patients were left exposed in the. most profane manner; one abortion patient was left lying directly opposite the open door with the sheet thrown back as the doctor had left it, with.  her legs abducted and the tiny shiny pearl-grey. bag resting on her shaved vulva – – -a lovely sight. for anyone walking by, and a beautiful hospital experience for the patient to remember and tell to. other prospective patients.

The other way t hat untherapy was performed was by giving these women pain, either physical or psychic or both. This was done in a variety of weays. Episiotomies were repaired without any anesthesia. One patient, who sreamed every time the doctor took a stitch, was told angrily to shut up or have her tongue cut out, in a tone of voice more serious that jesting. Patients have a saline installation were given an injection of local anesthetic prior to insertion of the cannula, but the doctor would not give the anesthetic time to work, but would begin the procedure immediately. So instead of having relieft of painm, the patient suffered two painful injections. Before a pudendal block was done, the doctor stood between the lithotomied legs of the delivery patient and, waving an eight or ten-inch needle over her belly, announced, “I am now going to give an injection for pain.” Right! Patient thinks, “If I didn’t have pain before, I’m sure gonna have it now ‘caue he’s gonna kill me with that thing,” If the doctor had said the same thing, but kept the needle hidden from vie, I’m sure the delivery would have been much easier for him; as it was she started the thrash around and scream and yell. which only slowed the operation and created a more uncomfortable situation for both doctor and patient.

In primitive society, there were certain physical pains associated with and peculiar to each sex. Women had then, as they do today, the pain of becoming a woman with menstrual cramps and the pains of childbearing. These pains distinguished women from men, and became something of which to be proud. Even today, women speak with pride of “. . . the 37 hours I spend in hard labor. . .” and of the fact “well, I just have to go to bed for a day each month because my cramps are so painful.”

Pride in apin is carried through into efvery day life, where peaople speak of the value of something in terms of the pain, mental or physical, that was necessary to its inception or completion. One can notice this in religion, when good Christians are to be grateful for the fact that Christ suffer for our sins.

Men, in the past, had painful initiation rites to go through before maturity was reached. These rites sometimes consisted of circumcision and/or torture. But today, with the development of civilization, there are no major physically painful events for men to have uniquely to themselves.  So, out of unconscious jealousy that women have physical developmental pains while men do not, men want to make the experiences of women in their physical trials as uncomfortable as possible.

I feel that we could change this prevailitng attitude of male doctors in labor and delivery by reviving painful puberty rites for men; perhaps we could insist on circumcision with pinking shears at age thirteen or fourteen. Then men could feel secure in their own right, and sympathetically try to alleviate the discomfort of women in labor and delivery,”