no choice of gender in hospitals
Reader comment on item: Islamists in the Hospital Ward

Submitted by Rebecca Moulds (United States), Jul 4, 2007 at 23:43

While living in Egypt, I was scheduled to have a mammogram at a Cairo clinic. After checking in for my appointment, I was told to go into a room to change into a gown. That was normal, but what wasn't normal was that the person doing the mammogram was a male radiologist! This was the first time in thirty years of mammograms that I didn't receive this service from a female, and although I was a little embarrassed at first, decided that we were in a medical center and it really didn't matter what gender was doing this test, but it did surprise me that this was being done in a Muslim country such as Egypt .

In France, I was in a hospital for a while and one evening, a male nurse attended to me. However, this time I was very upset, and told the nurses the next morning. They simply laughed when I told them how embarrassed I felt, and then I realised how silly I must have sounded. After all, I was simply a patient and he was a nurse, doing his job. In hospitals and similar places, there shouldn't be any problems with which sex is attending to the patient, especially in matters of life and death.

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