I recently spent two days at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. We got a healthy baby out of the deal so I am not complaining about their operation from a consumer perspective. However, I am thinking that there is an opportunity for litigators there.
Kleiner Perkins has a workforce that is 30-percent female (20 percent of partners are women) and that made them a target for legal buccaneer Ellen Pao and as well as guilty in the eyes of the New York Times, both before and after a five-week trial. What would the jury have made of an operation where 100 percent of the employees (that we saw, over a 53-hour period) were of a single gender?
Health care jobs are the best in the U.S. The chart linked from “Software engineering = meaningless job?” shows that being in health care offers the best combination of pay and meaning. If these jobs don’t pay as well as collecting child support in Massachusetts (see Kosow v. Shuman in this chapter, for example), they certainly pay more than the median Massachusetts hourly wage of $21.48 (BLS May 2014). There is great protection from foreign competition and virtually unlimited demand for services, especially since the government made it illegal not to purchase health insurance.
How can it not be a lucrative field for litigators when the maternity and labor/delivery departments were both 100-percent staffed by women? Let the defense argue that men don’t want to experience the joy of working around newborns and helping women realize their dreams of motherhood. The plaintiffs will argue that these departments created a hostile environment for men.
Readers: If Ellen Pao had what the New York Times thought was a great lawsuit, why isn’t there a truly superb lawsuit here?
[Sidenote 1: The value of healthcare IT was on display throughout the delivery process. Mt. Auburn has achieved all of the Obama Administration’s “meaningful use” hurdles. This was our second baby to be monitored through pregnancy by the midwives at this hospital. This was our second baby where a test from this group had informed us that we would be having a boy. Yet we were asked three times by three different people, each typing at a computer, whether we knew the sex of the baby and, if so, what it was. (Separately, at what age can gender dysphoria begin? If very young, is it medically meaningful to ask “Are you having a boy or a girl?”) While sharp labor pains tortured the mother-to-be, we were asked about mailing addresses, health insurance data, etc. (the same information collected exactly two days earlier at a checkup) While suffering labor pains severe enough to merit an epidural, the mom was asked to sign a consent form for an epidural. (Why wasn’t it signed, scanned, and in the computer weeks before?) Having been given a due date by this group within this hospital, we were asked what the expected due date was.]
[Sidenote 2: At a “meet the midwives” event and some similar gatherings of expectant mothers, all were talking about their own to-be-born babies as fully human individuals, e.g., when looking at a 2-month ultrasound. They would refer to the fetus by name in some cases, talk about the child kicking, etc. Yet, given that the hospital is in Cambridge, it is same to assume that most are supporters of the Massachusetts law permitting on-demand abortion of babies at any time through 24 weeks of pregnancy (Wikipedia says a fetus may be viable outside the womb at 23 weeks).]
[Sidenote 3: New mothers are provided with a stack of pamphlets regarding welfare programs for which she would be either newly eligible or eligible at a higher level of benefits. In theory, Cambridge provides free housing for all non-working adults, but there is a waiting list and a parent with a young child gets higher priority. Anyone with a low income is eligible for food stamps, but “Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)” is available in addition for women and young children, according to the federal site. Obamacare requires insurance companies to pay for a breast milk pump with each baby, so the mother of four children will eventually end up with a stack of Medelas in the closet.]
Related:
Well … Congratulations!
Congratulations!
They almost go out of their way to forget who you are.
Firstly, congratulations. Does that make three? Ian more tired now with number three than even with one and two. Enjoy.
On the topic of midwives etc, my experience lecturing nurses and midwives at University agrees with your numbers. There were one, possibly two male students in the midwives class. Very similar to the numbers in occupational and speech therapy. I have yet to hear of a push to get more males into any of these courses in the way engineering and medicine get promoted for women. I personally know of only one male midwife. He is older now and more administrative for a large region. Is it stereotypical to mention that he is gay?
Our birthing experience was that every staff member was female excluding wardies and our Doctors (Obstetrician, pediatrician and anesthetist). I suspect if you looked at average pay the two male groups could have averaged out to the average wage in the hospital… As an aside, Medicine at my university is normally about 50/50 male and female students.
If you attend a social gathering with my friends you find that nearly every female is a medical doctor and most of those are pathologists. They are mostly married to engineers or stay at home dads or, as in my case, delinquent PhD students.
Back to the question I suspect that you could do quite reasonably well on a law suit here as the defendants would be our not completely broke state governments or large health providers. I suspect that gender would just be an add on to general bullying claims that are distressingly common in our states health system.
Congrats!!!
Each new person you deal with asks you the sex of the baby not because they themselves don’t know, they certainly have that info in the medical record, but because you may have decided that you don’t want to know the sex before birth. That way they won’t be blabbing on about it and ruin the surprise.
Thanks, everyone for the congratulations.
Chris: They seemed genuinely curious about the expected sex and would follow up with a question if they didn’t get a full answer. This came at the same time as the question about the predicted (by them) due date. If “don’t ask, don’t tell” is the goal, why not add a field to that effect in the $100+ million IT system? Then display a red “DADT” icon at the upper right of every screen. Or illuminate an ambient light in the room.
Ah, but maternity is by definition a women’s thing, thus there can’t be a requirement for male personnel since they can’t truly understand what’s going on and how the new/prospective mothers feel and would just mansplain to them. At least that’s how some of the identity politics folk would likely portray it.
Congratulations!
We were told in a birthing class that signing the consent form before arrival and right before gave the doctors much more legal protection if the patient later says she was given one against her will.
If she only signs it 2 weeks before, she can say she changed her mind and the doctors refused to listen. If she only signs it immediately before, she can say it was under duress.
I also remember having to answer the same questions over and over. However, I think much of the redundancies were in place to ensure the parents ended up with the right baby, which I think is reasonable.
Congratulations!!
Regarding all women staffing, there are other fields in the same category that comes to mind: Supper Cut, and Cost Cutters to name one. I have yet to see a male hair dresser in any of their stores.
Regarding the repeated questioning, this is all about protecting the Dr., the staff and the hospital, so that even if they make mistakes [1], [2], they cannot be sued (even when the hospital is at fault). If that wasn’t the case, then here is a simple solution: have a picture of the patient on the wristbands and every paper and monitor on display associated with the patient.
Somewhat related: Just yesterday, I watched this [3] on BBC: “Pregnant mother … was moved between hospitals because of a lack of hospital incubators for premature arrivals.”
[1] http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/surgeon-who-operated-on-wrong-side-of-st-ann-woman/article_9be2a80a-42cb-5233-a95f-b85e1a4ebc36.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/09/us/surgeon-who-left-an-operation-to-run-an-errand-is-suspended.html
[3] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-33790463