Hospitals and Healthcare

In her memoir 'Scrubbed' Dr Nikki Stamp uncovers the extent of the challenges of working in the Australian medical system.

Our knowledge of the human body, which is mostly inferred from what is observed in males, may not always hold true for females.

A high-profile obstetrician and gynaecologist who is also a professor with the University of Sydney made remarks to peers attending a medico-legal conference in Melbourne that were so sexist and condescending that some attendees were in tears and conference organisers vowed never to invite him back.

Prof Hans Peter Dietz, an internationally renowned pelvic floor expert, has been the subject of numerous complaints to his employers, the Nepean hospital and the University of Sydney. Numerous women, including midwives and professors, have separately expressed serious concerns about Dietz’s behaviour.

Three health professionals who spoke to Guardian Australia said Dietz told attendees at medical conferences that women should be forced to sign a consent form if they wanted to give birth vaginally, to confirm that they were aware of the risk that their bodies might be left with tears and other complications if they did not get a caesarean instead.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that patients were about 20 percent less likely to assume that a woman wearing scrubs was a surgeon, compared with men. The study also found that patients consider a woman in scrubs to be “less professional” than a man in the same outfit. Because many hospitals, including mine, required workers to wear scrubs and PPE during the pandemic, this became an even bigger problem than usual for female physicians.