- Each Monday night at this time, KANU, and the Office of the Dean of Women at the University of Kansas, present a Feminist Perspective. This program provides a forum for women to speak out on issues which concern them, and listeners will have an opportunity to participate in the program, by calling the KANU open line at 864-4530. Now here's our moderator for a Feminist Perspective, KU Dean of Women, Emily Taylor. - Good evening, welcome to Feminist Perspective. Our guests tonight are Dr. Helen Gilles, a Lawrence Pediatrician, Dr. Barbara Lukert, who is on the faculty of the KU Medical Center, in the Department of Internal Medicine, Peggy Edmonds, who is to be graduated in a month, you said, from the KU Medical Center, and Judy Hadden, one of our assistant Deans of Women. Our topic tonight is, rather obviously, Women in Medicine. Recently, very recently this Fall, a group of women medical students and faculty members, at Harvard Medical School, published a pamphlet called, on Becoming a Woman Doctor, which gives information for college and graduate women. Those of you who are interested in a further details, beyond what we'll discuss tonight, will find a copy of this pamphlet in the women's library, in the Dean of Women's office, along with a great deal of other information that will be of interest, especially to women, and we invite all of you, of course, to stop at any time to make use of this library. Most of it is lendable. You can take it out if you wish, although we do have some a very valuable resource materials that I would prefer that you read in the office, but there is a reading room, and all of your are welcome at any time. One of the reasons that this group of medical students, women medical students at Harvard, decided to publish this book, is that, in their opinion, they feel that women are often a given inadequate career counseling. What do you folks think of that, and could you tell us a little bit about what counseling, if any, you received, career counseling, and then how you decided to go into medicine? Helen, could we start with you? - At the time I went to high school, there was no such thing as high school counselor, and so I received no career guidance. I think I decided on my own, as a senior in high school that I wanted to be a psychiatrist. At that time, I had so little counseling, I didn't even know what you had to do to be a psychiatrist. So I wrote, did some letter writing, and found out that I had to go to medical school, and I decided that I would go to medical school. - At what point then, did you change your mind about being a psychiatrist? - I don't know. I've wondered that myself. I think it was such a gradual change, and think part of it came inside, and I realized I really liked the actual practice of medicine so well. I'm basically such an optimist by nature, that working with children who are growing, and alive, and enthusiastic, meant a great deal more to me than psychiatry, as an actual practice; however, I think in any field of medicine, one does a considerable amount of counseling guidance. We certainly do with parents in the office. - How about you, Barbara? What about your career counseling? - Well, I didn't have much career counseling either. I grew up in small town, and we really didn't have, a school counselor, that sort of thing. I had thought, all through high school, that I'd like to go into medicine, but I thought it was probably just an impossible thing and then after my freshman year in college, and decided to just try it. Take pre-med, and just see if I did get into medical school. People sort of tended to discourage me, I think. Did you find that, Helen? Other physicians said that, I don't think you know what you're getting into, surely you don't want to be a doctor. But it wasn't, I don't think so much, I don't think it was necessarily because I was a woman because they really, the people who were in practice, knew what a demanding profession it was, they wanna make sure that I knew that it was going to be demanding before I got into it, but I sort of decided on my own, I guess. - And Peggy, you represent a slightly different generation at any rate, did you have any career counseling? - Not really. I grew up in Kansas City, and although we had high school counselors, they were traditionally oriented, and assumed the girls, regardless of how good a student they were, would go into home making eventually, and so we were never given any career counseling, otherwise. I hopped into medicine because my senior roommate in college was applying for medical school and I decided to apply, although I really hadn't thought about it that much before, just to see if I'd like it. And as it turns out, I'm glad, in retrospect that I did. - Now this was when you were a Senior in college? - That you made the decision, when did you say it was for you, Barbara? - Well, I really made the decision at the end of my Freshman year in college. - And you said in high school? - Yes, I started as a freshman in college, decided to go, knowing I was going into medicine. - Perhaps I should ask you, Judy, why you didn't decide? Did you have any career counseling? - I think Bio one was the reason I didn't. - Emily, what about you? - Well, you know, I seriously never even considered the matter of it, because of my dislike for the sight of blood, and I figured there'd have to be some involved with this. That is right, isn't it? I am afraid that just wouldn't have been for me, but that perhaps indicates something of my, at least recognition that there were somethings about oneself that have to be taken into account. Although, if you could tell me, I'm sure, does one overcome this sort of thing? Have you ever known anyone who went into medicine, who felt that way? - Well, we used to, when I was in Medical school, we had one fellow in our class, I can remember fainting twice but I always felt sure that once he got out of it, the responsibility was on him. He probably had no difficulty. - I can remember when I used to watch some procedures, like putting down the naso-gastral tube, if I'd see this down on somebody else, and I was just watching the procedure, I gage that once, I had to start putting it down on a patient, I could do it. - I like to know what Peggy's major was that you could get into medical school without a pre-med sorta guidelines. - A Physiology major and so I had all of my Science, and Math, and Chemistry. - And that's when we go on talk a little more about because we hear some conflicting stories concerning what one's major should be but I was interested in the timing that all of you mentioned because of these Harvard women, medical students are commenting on the competitiveness of admissions say and this gives you a little idea of the way in which this booklet is written. It may seem that getting into medical school requirements elaborate strategy potted in nursery school. This is not true. First grade isn't really enough but then they go on to say that actually although it is helpful to make advanced preparation that many women don't apply to medical school until several years after they've graduated from college. And so in their fitting, it's never too late. How about that? Do you think it's never too late? - I think it's increasingly more competitive and I think that probably now, still you have to begin pretty early, don't you? - And don't you think another very real disadvantage of waiting until your later is any group of doctors or whoever's deciding on admission, who's going to look at someone who's 10 or 15 years older who's applying for medical school and saying, that person is going to have 10 or 15 years less time to get in private practice, and we could take somebody that many years younger who will have that much more time to devote to be practicing doctor. - I think that's true and plus the fact I think it's a very practical consideration of this very rigorous medical school and internship. We've noticed around the medical center that some of the people who were older are really very fatigue and physically it's harder for them when you're 35 or 40, and then it was, I mean. - It couldn't have been any more tiring. - I felt tired all the way through medical school, I think. - Barbara on the grounds said, it seems to me that many times they're not medical school, but the ways that older people manage very well to keep up with physically with younger people. Well, I think the loss of sleep and that sort of thing, I think maybe it's become harder for me as I've gotten older I guess, like sort of facing my personal feeling. - I think it's maybe individual. - I have a close friend he's 32, he's in medical school with me and he was an older admission but he finds that he becomes this young as the people that he is with. I think a lot of a tiredness is psychological. Obviously, your body does age but if you wanna do something bad enough, you find it and you can do it. - I think Helen's point tell about, you mentioned a number of years of contribute is really about - What do you think of the programs and do you know how they're turning out that has been started to retraining programs for a particularly for physicist over supply? Are you familiar with these programs? But I believe the university of Miami set one up to retrain physicist to be medical doctors. Many of those people who went in here and would have established physicist so they would have been older. - A background in technology and such that they need only two more years, perhaps - There was a shortening of the period of time it was required. There's also the feeling on the part of her good many women that it is discriminatory to set at a very early age, the schools had set ages between 20 and 25 or something of that kind because it does deal out to the woman who marries and has a family, early, it doesn't necessarily deal her out. But if she does decide when she wishes to go back into or go into a career, she may find it too late. - Some schools and particularly some hospitals with their internship and residency programs are making it possible for a woman, for instance, to do one year internship in two years, or instead of doing three years residency maybe do a four, four and a half year residency, so that she does have more time off to spend with her family. - I think that's wonderful because there's been a real tendency in all kinds of education to be very rigid that there's only one way really to do it. Any step, put in the direction of people recognizing that there may be more than one way in which it can be done, I think it's very helpful. You referred Peggy, when you were talking about your own experiences to being a pre-med student, what does that really mean? I mean, what is a pre-med student? Is there a certain set of courses that you must take? - Probably being a pre-med student is being someone in college she knows it is going in medical school. You didn't have to have basic courses, you have to have about 20 hours in chemistry and you have to have so many hours in math and sciences but many people are French and English majors, and you really don't have to have a major in the sciences to go in a medical school. The concept of pre-med is I think not necessarily a valid one. - It's sort of psychological too, I suspect. Many times that one does not have to major in a science, but when you add up all the sciences that are still on, that are required that seems to me to be just a little misleading as you could say your a major in French but you still have to have biology and organic chemistry and physics, is this required? And some math? What about foreign language? - It depends on what school you want to apply to. If you're going to apply to John Hopkins, you have to do chemistry major, that's the requirements. It tends a lot on what school you're trying to get in to - The Harvard women suggested that the language might be extremely important depending upon where you are going to practice. If you're gonna practice Princeton's in the Southwest that the knowledge of Spanish would be very helpful, since there are those who don't speak English. - Or in a major urban center as well. New York has many Spanish speaking residents as well as desflurane in California. - What's your opinions on what's the best time to apply for a medical school if you decide you're interested in it. - It's about fall, the year before you play Mandarin. - About October, I mean your previous - Your senior year in college, in the beginning of that senior year you should come? - There's not much chance. And if you decided the second semester of your senior year by that time the medical classes would be filled up. - The last interview is usually in December. - I think that people expect to be getting their notices now or next week or so, don't they? - Of course, if you're really serious, you can always apply the next year. - Or apply for the following year. If you applied in the fall of your senior year and were not admitted, then we're still very much interested in the practice of medicine. What advice would you give people in? - I think it'd be helpful for them to talk to the dean of admission of that school to try to usually give them some idea of why they weren't admitted because where some there's exams scores were low or the interviewing committee, get some impression or just put the factors. Then you could say there was any way to sort of remedy some of those problems or if they were significant problems and then try to correct those when they apply. - It sounds though you're saying there's more involved than just your college grades then, as to whether you're admitted? - Right. - Medical college admission test, this I understand has both mathematics and science mathematics, what else do you recall what's in that test? - It's a long time. - It was just a general achievement test. In all areas it's science and english, mathematics. - So you suggested that it is possible for one to find out what are weaknesses are, in case she's not admitted and then there are things that can be done to correct those weaknesses. How good your grades have to be? As we know, it's a competitive situation. If they're gonna be more people applying then can be taken in. We also know that other things besides grades are important, but how important are grade? - I got the impression from talking to the admissions people on the admissions committee at KU that you had to have an A average let's say a decent scoring NCAT still applied but by a decent grade average maybe on a scale of 3, 2.25 or better, but after that whether or not you get in, it's a lot on personality in the interviews, they may have, for example a thousand people applying for 150 positions all those people will have the qualifying grade average and the NCAT score, or maybe 800 of those people will. And so it's on personality a lot just in the interview which isn't very objective - That even a 15 minute or an hour interview which you are there with a group, are you not? Therefore, others that they decide their fate, so to speak. - I'd also like to mention another area that seems to be important. Peter Casagrande is the pre-med advisor at KU, and he also suggest that one of the most important things that he deals with are the recommendations. I think the Harvard women also talked about that and that one of the most important things that a student is interested in pre-med can do is to get to know the teacher, professor well, and like the teacher know the student well so that the recommendation can be favorable one. And then what the advisor does is to accumulate the recommendations and then write his own recommendation. So that's another area that's widely important. A lot of students seem afraid to approach instructors on a one-to-one basis and to develop some kind of a personal relationship with them. And that seems to be in the wrong entity. - I feel about many of these things somewhat as you've expressed concerning the interview when making decisions on the basis of an interview, even the grades. I know students have been admitted to medical school who didn't have an A average, I've known doctors who were quite successful who certainly admitted that they did not go in with a, an A grade average. I certainly do not know or may able to propose any better ways of making these decisions. And yet it doesn't seem quite right. If it doesn't really require, I mean, it's easy of course to have something that's very definite like a grade point average and yet we know that grade point averages in the school are not the same. We know that they're not the same from course to course that there's Where are medical school's doing now about the schools that've gone to a pass-fail system. - That's what I was wondering, what are they doing? - Probably turning more and more to test results which then are also open to lots of questions. - I think it is a very difficult problem. The people who sit on these admissions committees really feel their problems. It's a very stressful situation because it is so difficult. When you have to pick one out three students that, very badly want to go into medicine, and really want this, a very sincere kind of a way. And you really feel sort of lost to try known better that you know, these people to make that kind of decision. - Given the question of recommendations in the very large school, it's quite possible for someone not really to know anyone well enough to ask for a recommendation that deals with anything other than what everybody already knows in the first place that he was a good student. And one of the bits of advice which the Harvard women give is that if you've done well and particularly in a science course, ask the professor immediately, after you taking the course moving forward, he had a chance to get you mixed up with lots of other people to write the recommendation then or if you've done some kind of a research project with the professor to, I get one at that time. - On these interviews, I suggest some topics which might very well be discussed. Do any of you recall being asked questions about role conflicts, for instance when you were being interviewed? - Yes. - Well the question that was asked me was if I was called to take care of a patient who was very ill child, my own child were very ill. What would I do? I said that I didn't think you could make those kinds of decisions ahead of time. I it's the situation never arose that it'd be pretty obvious what you should do. - Did they ask all the men candidates? - No. - I think they'd have the same decision to make too. - Yes, I would think so. - Some questions really - It's like the insurance or the lady in the tiger. - When I think back on my interview, it seems like that most of the questions were idiotic. Now there was a psychologist, a psychiatrist in that interview came and I had a feeling that they're not so interested in the answer that you give but rather how you react to it. - I think that's a good point. - If you act as if you can hear loaded questions without falling apart or getting mad, that's what they're looking for. - They of course, there are some women now who are saying that there are some questions anybody that we gotta get mad about. They have someone who's going to ask the women questions that they don't ask men but if your objective is to get in I suppose that wouldn't be a very good advice. They do suggest that... - Only if all the women they find reacted the same way. - They do also suggest that you not get defensive or answer antagonistically but you don't have to sit and agree or try to figure out what the other person is thinking. And they spoke also for a current medical problems which in the list they gave were rather highly emotionally charged medical problems such as abortion, for instance. Did they ask you any questions about that you can recall, in the interviews, or a healthcare delivery system? - Back in 1942 when I applied 1941, when I applied, I think it was, we weren't worrying about upset - Abortion was not a burning issue then. I can remember all my interviews being asked what would happen if I got married and had a family which I said, well, I would continue to practice. - And how many were in your entering class? How many women? I think six or eight, I'm just not sure. I know six - Approximately, how many students? - 80. - And what year did you go? - 52, started fall, I apply at 51, I started fall of 52. There were five women in our class and men are 25 I think. - And were the questions that Ellen was talking about that asked her 10 years earlier about the same as the ones that asked you? - I think so, because again, at that time abortion wasn't really thought about much and the health cares delivery wasn't the problem that it is now. - What about rising medical costs and was that one of the questions? - No. - I think about that, and you applied in the '70s, I take it - In 1968. - In 68, so you're really representing kind of three different decades in the medical school kind of a happenstance I think, mostly. Did the kinds of questions that these other women have been talking about seem like the familiar ones you were asked or where your's different? - We talked about the latest novel that I've read and about farming in Western Kansas. I think they were more interested in finding out whether the people being interviewed would admit they didn't know the answer to something. - Did the question on marriage come up. - Yes, I was engaged that time and they asked me what would happen if my husband would just continue to go to school up here and I wanted to go to school down at KU, I told him that I'd go to school down at KU. - I thought you were independent enough to get in to medical school then. - Yes. - The kinds of actual role contacts that you faced regardless of what the interviewing committee was expecting. Could you talk about those a little bit? What kinds of role conflicts did you really run into? I would love to talk about the subject. Because I think a woman in our society is trained to be one, to play one type of role, the feminine passing dependent role. And whether you've liked to slow or not everyone plays it to a certain degree. In medical school, to be a successful doctor you need to be a play, a different type of role have those characteristics, which are considered masculine in our society to be aggressive, to be independent and self-reliant. And so when you're in medical school or any profession, you have a definite conflict of roles. You on one hand, have been trained to be a feminine type of a role playing person. And now you need to be masculine as well. I think that this is the same conflict is being faced in our society today, with women's liberation movement for men and women to try to integrate the male and female locals in our society. - Could we pause now for just a moment for station identification and we'll come back to this question in just a few minutes. - As you know, this year, K and U was again bringing you the Saturday afternoon broadcast. So the metropolitan opera, someone recently wrote the metropolitan opera that the intermissions seemed almost as important as the opera itself. Prepared and produced by Geraldine Sylvain for the past 32 seasons, the innovation programs of the weekly upper broadcast are indeed important segments of the actual opera performance.