Southern Hospitality... NOT

It's time for another blog post - that makes 2 this year, I'm on a roll!

Today in clinic a patient came in with his home health nurse.  I went in the exam room to get his pillow for his wheel chair, and his nurse followed me to gather the rest of his belongings.  My attending was still in the other room talking to the patient's mother, and the elderly female nurse stood in front of me staring at my ID badge.  "I recognized your name, and I was wondering if you were planning on continuing your work here or going back overseas," she stated with an eerily calm demeanor.  At first, I thought she meant she recognized my name from the hospital and her other visits with this patient.  Then, I realized with a crushing blow of racism that she recognized me as a foreigner.  Was it my yankee English that made her suspicious? Did I inadvertently slip into my mom's accent? Was she just screening every vaguely foreign person she met (even if they did look like an innocuous pediatrician in a cardigan) for suspicious behavior to report to Homeland Security? Are my eyebrows significantly bushier than usual today? I responded that I was born and raised in Colorado, and she seemed confused.  I was confused too because I don't encounter this stuff much... maybe out of willful ignorance.

--By Farrah, who was asked by an attending physician once if her favorite movie was Aladdin because she looked like Jasmine.  She didn't know if she should be flattered or offended, so she just nodded.