On January 15, we met with Lisa Busillo, who is an anesthesiologist. We met at the Coffee Bean on Bleecker and sat down with some hot chocolate (she had tea). Lisa’s job is to put people to sleep during surgery and wake them up afterwards. She explained to us that waking people up and putting them to sleep isn’t easy: “Medicine isn’t a cookbook but you have to be a good chef.” She explained to us that when you put them to sleep, you have to give them the right dosage; people will need different amounts based on their age, weight, and medical conditions, among other factors. While on this visit, I think my group learned a lot, including the fact that when people think of doctors, they think of men. Lisa told us a story about how when she walks into an operating room and says, “Hi. I’m Doctor Busillo,” people say hi and then ask he when the doctor is coming, when she just introduced herself. This showed me that people stereotyped and thought of doctors as men, and not petite women. Lisa then told us that after she explained she was the doctor, they would say sorry and say she looked really young, like she was just out of college and then ask her how long she had been doing her job for. We also learned that she is constantly undermined by her techs, or assistants. She told us that anesthesiology is a field where you go to med school and spend a lot of time studying and learning. Nowadays, however, there are nursing techs that don’t put in as much time and effort that’s needed, and because of this, they don’t understand how complicated anesthesiology actually is. This showed my group that women really put in the effort but younger men believe they don’t have to put in as much effort in order to accomplish the same thing. I also learned that we (as people) automatically stereotype and think that most doctors are men, when women are just as capable. We can use this information in the teach-in to show how women are thought of to be as helpers and not doctors.
