Mark Schuster, a gay pediatrician who's now a tenured professor at Harvard Medical, reflects on what it used to be like:
I was on a consult service that helped diagnose a man with AIDS. His case hit home. He had just moved across the country with his boyfriend, who was a first-year Harvard medical student. The pulmonary fellow on our team, a generally kind man, grumbled to me that he hated having to go into this patient’s room. And so we didn’t go in much. The patient’s intern also avoided him, even managing to find herself too busy to perform a timed blood draw one night for a key lab test. I was still there writing my consult note, so after several attempts to gently remind her to take a break from having a light evening and chatting with staff, I just did it myself. This patient was not unlike any number of patients at hospitals around the country, wondering why the clinicians who were supposed to provide care and comfort appeared to be avoiding and even judging them.
The whole piece is worth reading.
The Dish 