A Harvard student must be given extra break time during a medical licensing exam to pump breast milk, a Massachusetts appeals court judge ruled yesterday.
The student, Sophie C. Currier, 33, of Brookline, Mass., had sued the National Board of Medical Examiners after it denied her request for more than the standard 45 minutes of allotted breaks during the nine-hour exam, which she will take over two days. [emphasis added]
She said she risked medical complications if she did not nurse her 4-month-old daughter, Lea, or pump breast milk every two or three hours.
In a word...WTF???
First of all, I want to
OK, all of that aside...Ms. Currier is taking the nine-hour exam over two days (more on that in a minute), which presumably means that there will be roughly two, 4.5 hour sessions. So if she...you know, gets pumped or whatever...immediately before the exam, takes a 22.5 minute break in the middle to do it again, and then again after the exam, that's two periods of 2.25 hours each that she's managed to go without doing her best impression of a Holstein. Did I miss something?
Was a lawsuit really necessary here, is what I'm asking?
It gets better. At the end of the article, we learn that:
Ms. Currier has already received some accommodation from the board for dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She can take the test over two days instead of one, for example.
Thank goodness she isn't going into a profession that requires long hours, sustained attention, rapid decision-making, and clear judgment in the face of high-pressure situations.
A bit of advice, Ms. Currier. People google their physicians these days (at least I do). When I do, I'm not really looking at whether they went to Harvard, or how experienced they are, or whether they've published anything. What I am looking for are obvious red flags like...did they sue the medical board for special accommodations for their licensing exam?
You should really think about the impact of this kind of publicity on your career.
(Though, I suppose you could always just sue.)
4 comments:
near speechless.
Ok B, just how exactly do YOU propose that we allow retards to get medical licensing? Don't complain about the current process unless you have an alternative proposal.
I'm glad someone else also thought this was ridiculous. Soon this woman will have accumulated so many accommodations that she'll need a special accommodation for them.
Sadly, I work with a number of people with simillar focus. I do not agree that breastfeeding is gross, it is a life affirming process (I would be a crappy doctor if I said otherwise), but there is a subculture of people who are militaristic about it to the exclusion of their entire peripheral vision. I had a colleague not prescribe a diet to a hospitalized infant because she SHOULD be breast feeding. The mom was surrepticiously bringing in formula to feed her child when I intervened.
Now, being married to someone who has breastfed my heir, it is a rather laborious process, and difficult to maintain, but you are correct in that it will not kill her (or the child) and she can pump ahead of time. I did not know that she was already getting accomodations otherwise.
Again, the most important thing...would you want this person to be in your residency/practice/as your doctor? Especially after all the publicity?
Finally...Breastfeeding good. Bottle feeding good (I was bottle fed, we can't all be perfect). Ridiculous lawsuits in a profession with too many already...extremely bad. Thanks for commenting on this article.
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