I’m a little worried it’s my institution (and former members of the team I’m on) that this woman rightfully complains about in the NYT yesterday. (I only say this because the woman is from a nearby city, and our service does a lot of breast surgeries.) However, in none of my experiences has anyone done anything remotely similar to what the patient describes:

Mary Duffy was lying in bed half-asleep on the morning after her breast cancer surgery in February when a group of white-coated strangers filed into her hospital room.

Without a word, one of them – a man – leaned over Ms. Duffy, pulled back her blanket, and stripped her nightgown from her shoulders.

Weak from the surgery, Ms. Duffy, 55, still managed to exclaim, “Well, good morning,” a quiver of sarcasm in her voice.

But the doctor ignored her. He talked about carcinomas and circled her bed like a presenter at a lawnmower trade show, while his audience, a half-dozen medical students in their 20’s, stared at Ms. Duffy’s naked body with detached curiosity, she said.

After what seemed an eternity, the doctor abruptly turned to face her.

“Have you passed gas yet?” he asked.

“Those are his first words to me, in front of everyone,” said Ms. Duffy, who runs a food service business near San Jose, Calif.

“I tell him, ‘No, I don’t do that until the third date,’ ” she said. “And he looks at me like he’s offended, like I’m not holding up my end of the bargain.”

I’d be just as upset as this woman if I was treated that way in the hospital. On my service, we always knock before entering a room, we greet the patient, we tell the patient what we’re about to do (“I’d like to take a look at your incision”), and we always cover a patient of any area that doesn’t need to exposed. Any time we remove a part of a patient’s gown, we make sure to close the curtain in the room.

Also, our teams are two medical students max–not half a dozen.

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