Get your misogyny out of the OR

Sadly, I wrote this one year ago. And it is still true and he still is a douche.

Ladies, it has begun. This makes me so mad, so sad, and so determined to stand up for my coworkers and the everyday person who can’t stand up for themselves. I know that standing up for yourself as a nurse is easier said than done. But I will not and do not stand for it when I am being abused by a surgeon, or another staff member. That is one of the best things my mother taught me, that I have the ability to say no, this is not right

Tonight, a very long, very bloody case was ending and I went into the room to help them come off the table. As I was preparing to move the patient with the rest of the team, this blowhard dickhead who has been intolerable since Tuesday, starting mouthing off to the nurse in charge of the room. Since was a surgical tech, and the nurse had twenty years of experience on him. He was saying some very not kind things to her, impugning her abilities in the OR, heavily hinting that she wasn’t as experienced as him because she was a woman. I looked at him after one minute of this and I told him to stop, that that talk was unprofessional and would not be tolerated in this operating room. He blustered at me, saying that he was just giving her a hard time. I looked at the nurse and asked, point blank, if he’d been “giving” any of the men in the room a hard time. She said no. At that moment the patient was ready to be moved. We safely transferred the patient and got him to the recovery room. The tech didn’t say anything to me as he left. But, after prompting, the nurse told me about her day with him, about the slights and the jokes at her expense. And I was appalled. I reassured her that she did nothing wrong and that she had to right to tell the tech that he was inappropriate, just like I did.

But I knew that this was just the beginning. Now that his man had been elected, he was feeling free to act like his man in his place of employment. He was feeling free to make rude comments, although he stopped short of copping a feel, which would’ve gotten him fired. At least we have that small saving grace, that laying hands on people in a malicious manner is dealt with swiftly and with termination.

I am going to escalate this to the management. My boss and I will be having a little conversation about this.

I realize that in the OR people feel freer to talk about what is on their mind, to be a little crude. Hell, I swear like a sailor at work. But if you are the only woman in a room full of men and the others are making you uncomfortable you should be able to shut that kind of shit down and make it clear that you will not be tolerating it, without laying hands on the perpetrators.

Fuck that shit, I don’t care if the president elect got away with it.

Not in my OR.

There will be no excuse.