Our Shared Shelf discussion

Hello Shared Shelf Group:

I wasn't sure where to include this topic in the discussion but I still thought it was worthy of posting somewhere.

I am employed as a Library Assistant in a university library. Our students are currently in the midst of writing their final exams. Yesterday afternoon we had an incident where a female student, who was studying alone, fainted in our lounge area. Two other female students saw her faint and then followed her to the washroom where she was subsequently sick. I was at the front desk when the incident occurred when another female student came to get me to let me know what had happened. When I checked in on the ill student she said that she had never fainted before, was not feeling well, and asked for additional help. I called our Campus Police who dispatched fire and ambulance (which is university protocol). Within minutes, THREE MALE campus police officers, TWO MALE fire rescue officers, and TWO MALE paramedics showed up - all standing over/crowding the ill student in the stall of the female washroom. While they were all assessing her condition, the two females students I was standing with looked at me in slight horror and remarked, "They are all male. They couldn't send a female? That is so intimidating. She must be so uncomfortable." Right after making this comment, two of the campus police officers came out of the washroom and not so discretely talked about how the student was "on her period" and "had really bad cramps". One male officer, shrugged his shoulders and stated, "She probably didn't eat either."

Between the chaos of the situation and having an "ah ha" moment about the lack of female emergency workers, I was at a loss for words. Thankfully the student is okay and was able to call a family member to come and take her home. However, for the remainder of my work shift and in to today, I haven't been able to shake both the female students' and my concerns of the overwhelming male presence in yesterday's situation. In my previous employment I dealt with sexual assault reporting and know first hand that it was a struggle to get female officers to respond if the victim was female - and I was often given a hard time for specifically requesting one.

I really needed a forum to discuss this incident and am so grateful that this group exists, as I feel it is the perfect venue to do so. I would love to hear anyone's feedback regarding this incident as well as thoughts regarding the lack of female personnel in emergency response scenarios - that is, is it due to lack of interest or are the expectations/is the testing geared too much in favour of males?

Thank you for "listening" Our Shared Shelf members!

Erica :)

Great topic!

I don't know enough about their training to have an opinion on any of that, other than to say that regardless of whether it is equally doable for men and women, it needs to include sensitivity training, and these kinds of workers (as well as people in the field of medicine in general) need to be conditioned to take women's symptoms and experiences more seriously than they do currently. "She is on her period, bad cramps, probably didn't eat," could potentially be why she fainted, but if she's never fainted before, I kind of feel like that's unlikely? I've had experiences, both in a normal medical appointment, and in emergency room situations, where my symptoms were clearly being dismissed, or reduced to my period, because the doctor assumed I was being weak or overdramatic. (view spoiler)[Once when I was having bad cramps and passing blood, the emergency room workers asked me more times than I can count: "Are you sure it's not just your period?" No, it's coming from my BUTT. (hide spoiler)] And these things happen whether the doctor/emergency worker is male or female, thought I agree it's far less likely for a woman who may be more sympathetic to another woman's issues. Also, there really do need to be women available for calls like the one you describe, because that really is very intimidating.

Sorry for the rant! Haha

I think I agree with Katelyn, the problem here isn't really that the emergency responders were male, its that they were dismissive and disrespectful. And that there were way too many of them. Seven people in a bathroom stall?

To me that is evidence of inadequate or bad training. Not a good job assessing the situation and coordinating a response, not a good job assessing the patient, not a good job communicating with the patient or the library staff or the patient's concerned friends, not a good job being respectful in discussing the situation afterward. So really, kind of an all around fail. But for me that isn't because they are men, rather because it seems like they are inadequately trained or disregarding their training.

I think it would be a good idea to have mixed gender teams where possible, just because I'm generally in favor of mixed gender teams on principle, they each tend to catch things the other misses. But a male emergency responder could do a perfectly lovely job of dealing with a situation of a young woman who fainted in the women's restroom of a university library. Men aren't born to be dismissive and rude bulls in a china shop, they can actually behave with sensitivity and intelligence if required to do so. In this case its actually part of their job, which they aren't doing.

So for me, what I'd say is that the problem is with the way your campus police and paramedics are being managed and supervised. Which is a leadership issue. I would first investigate what protocol they are supposed to be following. If there is protocol they weren't following that's one issue. If there isn't protocol that's a different one. Either way your issue is with their supervisors who aren't managing them properly because that was inadequate and unprofessional.

Bunny wrote: "I think I agree with Katelyn, the problem here isn't really that the emergency responders were male, its that they were dismissive and disrespectful."

I also think that these are two seperate issues. Dismissive and disrespectful attitudes of medical staff can happen to anyone. I could tell a story of a young man in his early 20s who went to the emergency hospital for irregular heartbeat. The med staff just looked at his long hair and told him not to do drugs. Except he didn't do drugs. It was probably a side effect of medication he was on for another health issue, but nobody bothered to find out that day. I really don't understand how people working in the medical field can act according to their prejudices. It's disrespectful at best and life-threatening at worst.

Besides that though, I think that the young woman who fainted being outnumbered 7:1 by dismissive male emergency responders must have been very uncomfortable. I know it would have made me feel worse. Maybe the system is partly to blame though, since anyone would feel uncomfortable if 7 people are rushed to attend them. Why would you need several fire and police officers if this is a medical emergency? Her health condition should only be relevant to medical staff, unless she was attacked or had an accident, which was not the case.

Sandi wrote: "Maybe the system is partly to blame though, since anyone would feel uncomfortable if 7 people are rushed to attend them. Why would you need several fire and police officers if this is a medical emergency? Her health condition should only be relevant to medical staff, unless she was attacked or had an accident, which was not the case. ..."

Yes I agree, which is another sign to me that the training and procedures are inadequate. Its possible that dispatch is required to send security along with the paramedics in case there is some sort of unreported danger - but once they had spoken to people at the library and assessed the situation the security and fire officers should have backed off and let the paramedics handle it. The fact that they were all milling around in the bathroom suggests to me that each team was acting independently and not coordinating with the others. Apparently they don't have a procedure in place so you ended up with a too many cooks in the kitchen situation.

Sandi wrote: "I also think that these are two seperate issues. Dismissive and disrespectful attitudes of medical staff can happen to anyone. I could tell a story of a young man in his early 20s who went to the emergency hospital for irregular heartbeat. The med staff just looked at his long hair and told him not to do drugs. Except he didn't do drugs. It was probably a side effect of medication he was on for another health issue, but nobody bothered to find out that day. I really don't understand how people working in the medical field can act according to their prejudices. It's disrespectful at best and life-threatening at worst."

Training to manage people's health, be it physical or mental, is just about as close to a godly figure as we can come still, and unfortunately it gets to some people's heads. This is usually not addressed in a satisfactory manner during training (although if you have a successful example, please share with us, I'd love to study it closer), but it's all about cramming bits of information into one's head, and in rather isolated ways observing and analysing the system that is human.

It's for a reason that holistic is something of a curse word still, because far from everyone is humble enough to even acknowledge the connection between mind and body. When I talk about science/medicine having its limitations, it's because the people doing it are narrow-minded enough not to look wider, beyond their usual boxy kind of thinking.

Training programmes therefore don't address this, but the healthcare worker is usually considered to be in full health at all times, unless we are thinking of psychologists in some part of the world. I wish it were mandatory for all to maintain their own mental health, and employers should finally see the need and value of this. But instead we get a range of people, some of which are cocky, self-absorbed, without skills to reflect and adjust, etc.

The healthcare system truly is only as good as its weakest link, and it's beyond my comprehension why we have come to kind of a standstill on this. It seems that status quo today is how we want things, and egos are inflating as we speak. Very few, such as Atul Gawande, are criticising - and successfully managing to cause change in - ingrained routines today, but of course others have to question and criticise negatively. Change is very uncomfortable for many still, as is admitting that a new way might be better than the old one.

Geez, seven people. I would have felt so scared upon waking up from my fainting, like 'OMG what's so wrong that there are seven people here?!'

Other than that, I'm not really going to add anything new to the convo but jump into the training issues wagon. While some women would prefer to have other women there and I understand their point and would probably also wonder myself why there seems to be a shortage of women, I personally wouldn't care much...in this particular case, mind you. Not even if my period was concerned. After all, it's a pretty natural thing, plus they're emergency / medical staff so hey, they're used to all kinds of stuff and I would think that my period isn't going to get them all in giggles or blatantly inappropriate remarks. It just looks like your campus could benefit from a reassessment of said emergency services and their performance. Not only from the effectiveness factor, but also money wise, because I am guessing that these services cost your campus a hefty sum each year. Improving their performance and the assessment of the response needed in each case would probably help save money. :)

Am I the only one who doesn't see anything wrong in the behavior of the paramedics?

First, the fact that it was an all male group...they were coming from 3 different places (police, fire, and EMS). It would be prohibitively time consuming for all these organizations to have to plan to send a woman any time a woman was the person in need. Yes, it might have been scary for the young girl...but I think that has more to do with the fact that she's in a bathroom with SEVEN people, presumably all in uniform, at one time. Also, it seems as though female library workers and other students were nearby, so what exactly is she supposed to be afraid of? If everyone is acting professionally....nothing.

Second, the girl fainted during finals week. It was the first time this happened and that's scary. The paramedics evaluated her, talked to her, and came to the conclusion that she was on her period, and probably hadn't eaten. During a high stress time in her life. MAYBE, they used their professional judgement to ascertain that this was probably the cause of her fainting. They probably advised her to see her primary care physician if this happens again or if she continued to feel bad after eating and resting.

It seems really presumptuous to assume they were talking about her dismissively or not taking her seriously by stating the facts about her period. It is relevant information in this situation. It's also really unfair to speculate that they're downplaying her situation based on one that.

I had a seizure during finals of my first year in graduate school. I've never had a seizure before or since. It was terrifying. My professor took me to the hospital on campus where I was evaluated and a doctor talked to me about what was going on. I was on my period. I was stressed. I was drinking a LOT of caffeine. And a small percentage of students have seizures or fainting happen each year. It just happens. The perfect storm in otherwise healthy individuals. The doctor advised me to sleep more, drink less caffeine, and try to eat better. If it happened again, I was to come back for more intense evaluation. I appreciate that doctor for taking care of me and NOT draining my bank account with unnecessary tests.