Jay⭐️

Aurora.

(Or med student, nurse, physio, pharmacist, etc)

I remember discussing this on tumblr a while back, and occasionally someone asks a medblr for some advice, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring up some suggestions on how to deal with medics in your life. 

Going out:

Our timetables can be awful. We’ll be busy at times you’ll want to meet; it’s really not a sign we’re not interested, we just physically can’t be there when we’d like to be. Ditto if our jobs involve rotating to different places. Believe me, we find it as frustrating as you do. 

Work can be emotionally, mentally and physically draining. We spend some of our free time tired, sleepy, grumpy or indisposed to meet. If we’re sleepy or not much fun sometimes after a run of horrible shifts, it’s not personal. I’m not advocating putting up with a medic who spends most of their time being an antisocial jerk, but please bear in mind that sometimes we’ll just be exhausted.

So when it comes to going out, we might need to do things that are low effort; sometimes it’ll be dinner instead of something that involves walking, or even netflix rather than going out at all. Or… we might want to do things that are more active particularly because we want to make the most of our time and we’re finally out of the hospital so we want to live our entire life at once.

We might be used to eating or sleeping at weird times. If we turn up to a date and we’re not hungry, it’s not personal. Likewise if you notice that we’ve forgotten to eat/been too exhausted to eat, we appreciate when somoene reminds us to take care of ourselves, too. We’re often so fixated on taking care of others that we really can forget to take care of ourselves.

Because we work strange hours and are generally busy, you will have to be good at enjoying your own life, too; with or without us. Dating a doc isn’t for someone who feels like they need a partner to always be around every evening, and who needs their SO to accompany them to every event; we just physically won’t always be able to be there.

On the plus side, this means that we’re usually very accepting of SOs having hobbies and interests. Dating a doc is great for people who are more independent in themselves, because you can bet we’ll probably be too busy with our own lives to smother you in yours.

However, it does mean that if your timetable is also busy, you’ll both need to work extra hard to make things work. Unfortunately, drifting apart or struggling to find time to be together can be a real problem, particularly if you are both shift workers. It’s not impossible, though; lots of docs and nurses end up with other docs and nurses, and they make it work!

As I said, we end up staying late, or having to cover for colleagues. It’s a pain for us to organise leave or holidays, and our timetable can dominate our life. Having a doc or nurse in your life means living around complext timetables.This can be really trying for us as well as for you.

If you can, try to take some of the organisational burden from them, particularly if your job is less busy or time intensive than theirs. When your working life is already a massive, never-ending to - do list, it makes a big difference when somoene does their bit to make your personal life a bit less exhausting. You don’t need to become their PA, just be considerate.

Conversation:

I hope you like medical anecdotes. Because you’re going to hear them.

Our work is full of life and death stuff, and there’s a lot of ‘work’ stuff we have to do outside of work, so it can dominate our lives. Sometimes we need to get that off our chest. You don’t have to understand, but it’s nice if you can listen.

That said, you may have to gently remind them that there is more to talk about than just work. Whilst being with someone means talking about things that are important to them, it’s important that the person you are with doesn’t bore you constantly, either. We need distraction from work for our sanity, and you need to talk about things that are not our work, too. And it’s only fair that we don’t bore you to death.

Most of our friends are probably medics. Apologies for all of the medical conversations you’ll be stuck listening to because you’re hanging out with an entire group of medics.

If our work talk is too gory for you, please let us know. You’re seeing a person who’ll probably certify someone dead, stick a finger up someone else’s butt, look at several necrotic ulcers  and lots of people about their bowel habits all before lunchtime, so we tend to lose our sense of what is appropriate dinner conversation. No matter how strong your stomach is, we’ll probably stray into conversations that’ll test your tolerance, without even realising it. We spend so much time talking to other medics, that we can forget what normal people consider appropriate for casual conversation.

You think that we might always be into really intellectual entertainment (and we are, at least some of the time), but every doctor I know also needs to chill with really brainless entertainment once in a while because sometimes you just need to watch something that doesn’t make you think at all.

Don’t let their being a doctor or nurse intimidate you. If I had a pound for every guy who said “well, my job’s a lot less important/exciting/etc”, I’d be living somewhere a lot nicer. Healthcare professionals are normal people just like you; we’re really not some kind of class apart. We’ve got a dorky side or a quiet side or a goblin side, and we’ve got plenty of insecurities, too. If you put us on a pedestal, it makes it hard to have a genuine relationship.

Equally, if you date a doctor who makes you feel inferior, ditch them. You deserve to feel like an equal in any relationship.You have every right to expect courtesy from whoever you are seeing.

We are secretly dumbasses. People expect us to be smart all the time, but we’re human. We have weaknesses just like everyone else. It’s another reason you shouldn’t put us on a pedestal; we want to be loved for the dorks we are, rather than for some kind of intellectual ideal we can’t live up to.

Please don’t call us at work. We really can’t talk at work, though messaging is fine as we can respond to those if free. But be understanding that your medical paramour is probably super-busy at work to the point that checking their phone is not an option. Please don’t be offended if we take a while to reply. 

Being a part of each other’s lives /Living together:

We may be super organised to an anal-retentive degree, or we may be completely scatterbrained when it comes to having non-work stuff together. If we’re having a particularly bad time at work, we might need a bit of patience or prompting regarding shared life stuff. That’s not to say that the non-medic should do everything, but be on the lookout for when the medic in your life is overwhelmed with stuff and when you can give them a hand. If that’s not something you’re good at spotting, you can always just ask. 

People will often think you are lucky (”aren’t doctors, like, rich?”) and that it’s prestigious (”oh, a doctor, wow! lucky you! Free medical advice!”), but that’s not entirely fair on you, because dating doctors or nurses can be hard work! I think the people who put up with us (or rather the effect our work has on our entire lives) deserve a ton of credit. It’s not easy, and not everyone can do it (nor should anyone have to). And besides, you are a smart and interesting person in your own right, not defined by the job your SO does.

We deal with emotionally draining crap; sometimes we see some horrible stuff that we struggle to deal with. It won’t be easy for you to see someone you care about struggle with this, particularly if it’s not something that you can relate to. The way we deal with it can vary, and we may not always be able to cope, or deal with it in a healthy way. It’s not your fault if we’re struggling, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re expected to be a counselling service.

You might get pretty familiar with the signs of aniety and depression; a lot of medics can suffer from burnout or mental illness. The strain on your partner might also put a strain on your mental health. Look after each other and get help if needed. You absolutely shouldn’t suffer alone, and neither should they.

In the long run, you have to be able to trust your partner. We work silly hours, but you need to get to know someone well enough to trust that if they say they have a late shift, they aren’t playing around with someone else. That doesn’t mean you can’t have suspicions if warranted, but dating a doctor might be difficult for someone who is still getting over being cheated on, or who tends to jealousy and suspicions easily. We tend to have odd hours and stay late at work a lot, and we’ll always have plausible sounding reasons for not being around. So it helps if you aren’t someone who feels insecure or jealous easily.

If we wanted our nursing colleagues/fellow doctors/whoever at work, we’d be with them. It’s not uncommon for partners to feel a little jealous of the time their partner spends with work colleagues, but you are no less of a catch than any of their colleagues. And if they wanted their colleagues so much they would have already been with them.

That said. Don’t assume that doctors are all nice; there are plenty of people among us who aren’t necessarily good or honest. Trust a person’s actions over their words.  There are players amongst us, so don’t assume that just because someone is a doctor that it makes them a nice person; evaluate us according to the exact same criteria you’d use for anyone else.  You absolutely deserve to be treated with the same level of respect and honesty from one of us as you do from any other partner; there are no excuses for hurtful behaviour. Being a doctor or nurse is not a free pass to be a nasty person.

Don’t let a medic treat you like a servant or someone who is beneath them. No matter what you do, if you are dating them then you deserve every bit the same level of respect and courtesy that you give them. No matter how much of a hotshot your friends or family might think them, they are just a normal person to you, equal in every way. I remember an interview with some eminent doctor, in which the interviewer asked something like “What’s it like being married to someone like you?” and the person replied something like “At home I’m just ‘dad’ or a husband, like anyone else”. And that sums it up; we’re just normal people to those in our lives.