I was just reading some of your letters, when I saw the one about MDs becoming aroused when they see a female patient. As a male nurse, I have to tell you that as much as I may joke around about sex outside of the hospital, it is as if I change my whole perspective once I pass through the doors. I look at the patient as JUST a patient. If I do think that I will be turned on, I simply have someone else perform the duty I needed to do to avoid any complications. I think that people may watch too many movies.

:)

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(2)
Dear Alice,

Regarding the previous question about doctors being turned on by their patients during GYN exams:

As a physician, I can tell you that for the majority of us, two things occur. One, we are so focused on what we are doing that we do not think of these "sexual parts" as sexual. They become purely parts of a person's anatomy just as a nose or ear is. There is simply no time to consider one's own sexual reaction. Second, some days you see so many penises, vaginas, etc., that you do feel ti red of seeing them. (And don't forget, many of the patients come in with bumps and lumps and odors and discharges, so that also makes it rather difficult to get turned on.)

When home with my wife, I'm not a doctor anymore, and I don't look at my wife as a set of body parts. I don't examine my wife. I enjoy making love with her. So in a sense, yes, I do turn on and turn off that part of my brain just as I turn on and turn off the part of my brain that is thinking about pathology and disease during an exam.

Hope this helps.

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(3)
Dear Alice,

A little while ago my family doctor was on vacation. I developed what I suspected was a urinary tract infection and had to see the doctor on call... it was a female... and I was mortified. As a woman I feel much more comfortable with a male doctor. Almost any woman will vouch for me when I say that having your privates clinically poked and prodded is one of the most stress-filled, uncomfortable things we go through. If a woman finds a gynecologist she's comfortable with — whether male or female — it doesn't matter what any man in her life thinks about it she has the right, and the obligation to herself, to continue seeing that professional.