The Princess Nurse and Dr. Fancy Pants

First, I’d like to thank everyone for their kind words regarding my last post. Some of you have asked me if my idiot doctor, Dr. Fancy Pants, knew that I work 16-hour shifts. Yes, I told him about my shifts. I also reminded him that psych nurses must be able to run away from dangerous patients when they start going off. He just looked at me and said, “Deal with it.” I know what you’re thinking, and I couldn’t agree with you more. I talked to my nursing supervisor when I went to work on Saturday, and he gave me some insight into what’s going on.



My supervisor suspects that the hospital told Dr. Fancy Pants to release me for work. He won’t tell me how he came to this conclusion. I’m the only full time nurse who works every weekend on our unit, and since I’ve been off work, two nurses have quit and another nurse has gone out on family leave. Many of our doctors are foreigners, and they depend on their employment at our hospital as a way of keeping their J-1 visa wavier. My doctor falls into this category, and if he doesn’t follow orders, he could find himself on a slow boat back to China. My supervisor has also heard Dr. Fancy Pants make derogatory comments about American women. He has said that American women are “spoiled brats” and that we demand too much from our doctors. He said that American women are nothing more than “pampered princesses.”

As a princess nurse, and as an American woman, I am offended by these comments. At the risk of sounding like an ugly American, if you don’t like our culture, go back home. There are plenty of people who are waiting in line to come to America to take your place. I’ve seen how cultural bias can influence the type of care women receive from foreign-born physicians. I’ll never forget the time when an Iranian doctor told one of my patients to go back to her abusive husband. The doctor said that as long as her husband was paying the bills, it was her duty to put up with his behavior. The doctor was a psychiatrist. The nurses told the patient to find a new doctor, and we gave her a list of shelters for abused women. We also gave her the phone number of a great divorce attorney. I’m not saying that every foreign-born physician is a chauvinist pig, but this kind of stuff does happen.



This princess nurse is sick of Dr. Fancy Pant. I am looking for a new physician.