1. Pulling out a phone to check the time is "disrespectful" (your older professors will assume you're getting a quick round of "words-with-friends" in).
2. Being successful but also professional means having functional bling. If I get a doctor's bag, it's going to be the most abstract Vera Bradley pattern I can find. If I have an excuse to have a watch, it will be like a crazy beautiful watch. It won't be like I'm "dressing" up (which would be unprofessional) because I actually need a timepiece (... well I mean technically. I think I can make the argument that I need a time piece).
3. It just feels like a doctorly thing to have. I want to be standing over a patient, taking their blood pressure, their heart and respiration rates, and instead of staring at a wall, I want to be looking somewhat at the patient so I don't seem distant. I also feel like there are a lot of portraits of doctors looking at their watches while assessing a patient's vitals.
4. Also, most obvious: being late is unprofessional. You can lose "professionalism points" from our clinical reasoning course by being late to lab. So yea, punctuality is professional.
Consequently, I've been obsessed with finding a watch. Stylistically, I'm pretty "out there," so the challenge is to try and find something that expresses my personality but doesn't force my personality onto others (or worse, offends people). I also don't want to drop much more than $100, so I went to overstock.com because it's really difficult to find cool watches for women. I guess time is more of like a "dude thing." I don't know and I didn't really care, until, after scrolling through about 500 watches I see this atrocity:
Not only is this thing disgusting, it also asks a very important question: why isn't there a "whimsical women's doctor theme white leather watch"? I do not think I want to put on an air of "whimsicality" when I begin rotations next year, but dammit, I want a doctor's watch made for my womenly wrists!
Well, I have since searched overstock.com for a doctor's watch, and they don't have any. I tried searching for "professional" watches, and of the 40 results I got, 39 of them were men's watches. The one female watch was for "professional divers." Which I guess is cool and stuff because hey! I would've never thought women could descend to the same depths as men due to their whimsical womenly constitution's and other almost-trivial-but-still-obnoxious sexist b***s***.
Anyway, rant over. If you're curious, I bought the above two watches. The one on the right is transparent, which means I've finally gotten something that's actually my skin tone.... which is another thing I could complain about. But I won't. Since like, I'm in medical school and am like, totally busy and schizz.
Vera bradley is for little girls and is sooo not profesional.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you have to wash your hands a lot--which I hope you do--you should get a waterproof watch with a metal watch band wet leather is gross.
Ah yes, the one on the left is waterproof.
ReplyDeleteAnd I said the most ABSTRACT vera bradley pattern available, because the material is very forgiving and the quality of most of their pieces is actually quite high.
now *I* want a vera bradly doctors bag. I mean - I need something to carry my stethescope around in!
ReplyDeletealso - I am hoping to get away with my cheap watch from amazon in clinics next year. its not "professional" per-se but it is extremely practical and I knew a doctor at University of Chicago that used one just like it - perhaps that it me being "whimsical" :) - http://www.amazon.com/Timex-Womens-T5K020-Ironman-Traditional/dp/B000P0VEH8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347820537&sr=8-2&keywords=timex+women
I do have a soft spot for Timex watches! But I don't think I could pull off that pink and teal combination. I suppose time will tell when I eventually have to buy a timex watch because everything else breaks too easily.
ReplyDelete(and you should totally buy a vera bradley bag! they are surprisingly sturdy and most models have a ton of little pockets for all the more obscure doctoring tools ECR lab requires us to have...)