No I do not think that. Did you get the impression that I was suggesting physically dragging her? 
There are ways to prep a child for dealing with an anxiety provoking circumstance and there is getting her there and giving an experienced clinician a chance to successfully talk a teen through it, which they have likely done many many times before.
She is given no real alternative but to comply, so she buckles under the pressure of dominating male expectations.
Not my daughter, thanks anyway.
(That it’s been routinely and often done is really not the flex you think it is. )
Yeah, I’m still challenging the hypothetical. If it is a real story, i bet at least one of those practices has a female practitioner who could do the squicky part of the exam. Maybe a nurse or another doctor who isn’t the specialist. I seriously doubt the specialist needs to look himself, even if he needs to guide the treatment plan. Delayed puberty? Someone else can measure stuff and report the numbers.
Is that ideal? Maybe not. I bet it’d be good enough, and in network. And a very a couple hours in the phone would be adequate to confirm that.
FWIW her mother wrote the letter in the linked article.
That most kids can be talked through it without major drama by an experienced clinician and with a supportive parent isn’t a “flex” - my ignorance, maybe it is. I don’t know what that means and don’t care to look it up - it is just reality. Kids manage to do all kinds of things they initially say they’d just die before they’d ever …
Oh I’ve come up with another possible specialist. This could be a gastroenterology condition, maybe Crohns or the like, and the “private area” is looking at the anus on occasion for possible involvement. But doesn’t fit the expectation of one to two years of treatment. Puberty delay seems more probable.
Anyway @puzzlegal yeah not sure that would be an option just medicolegally. If it is an important enough part of the exam to insist upon being examined then it is important enough to have to evaluate for yourself.
I can’t think of a nurse that pelvic exam(proper) is in their job description.
Looking at a rash, sure.
NPs? yeah they probably do them.
A doctor or Nurse practioner or Physicians assistant and Nurses looking at you and touching your body is something every human has to become accustomed to. Unless you plan on being extraordinarily healthy til you die. You will be poked and prodded sooner or later.
I find dental exams much more invasive. They right up in your grill, so to speak.
It depends on the condition of course.
But i was think of a friend whose kids need to see some rare specialist that’s a 2 hour drive away in a part of the county with a lot of doctors. Except during the pandemic, it turned out that they could do a telehealth appointment, with a local place drawing blood and shipping it off and my friend weighing them and taking some other measurements. They needed the expertise of the rare specialist, but he didn’t actually need to do the regular physical exams himself.
Exactly this. Candidates for the healing profession are rigourously screened and undergo many years of intensive training to prepare them to do their jobs. They should be assumed to be ethical and trustworthy and allowed to do the work for which they’ve been trained.
There certainly have been cases of sexual abuse by doctors, but this is very rare, and is also why I fully support throwing the book at them – medical license revoked for life, and jail time. It’s an unconscionable breach of trust. But it is, indeed, relatively rare.
While this may be true, it’s also true that children are often left traumatized by being coerced/manipulated/coached through an experience some adult felt, ‘they’ll be just fine with…in the end’. In reality the adult/coacher ALWAYS goes away believing it went just fine. They didn’t burst into tears till they got home alone, so it doesn’t count.
I will never be in favour of forcing children into experiences they don’t want because it will build character. A 14 yr old girl forced into a medical experience she doesn’t want, because, “it won’t kill her”, or it will toughen her up, borders on cruelty in my book.
It has often been done in the past isn’t proof of anything. Let’s not forget they wouldn’t even give women anesthesia during childbirth initially because they’d survived all those times without it.
That coaching them through went just fine, EVERY time from the Dr’s view, says everything to me. An inability to see that, is an excellent reason to insist on a female Dr.
Can you imagine forcing an adult woman into a medical choice she insists she does not want? No, but it’s cool for a teenager? It’s not.
Off topic, so I will not pursue this… I developed an allergic rash while in Indonesia. Nothing serious, just itchy and in the tropical heat quite unpleasant.
I happened to be in a market where I came across a Chinese medicine stall. I consulted with the proprietor… and he told me to go and see a (western style) doctor, which amused me.
I did not, and it cleared up on its own.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting the doctor will actually molest her. When I was a kid it wasn’t at all uncommon to be forced to allow adults to touch you. Not in the sense of molesting , but you had to go along with hugs, kisses, pinched cheeks from various relatives and friends of your parents whether you wanted to or not. And then, the idea became that kids who were forced into this sort of not-harmful touching didn’t necessarily see a difference between having to let Aunt Gracie touch you and some other adult touching you and wouldn’t say know, tell their parents etc. ( Don’t know if there was any research but that was the idea). So many kids started being taught that they didn’t have to accept unwanted touches, not even hugs from grandparents. Like I said , I don’t know if there was any research but I’m pretty sure if my friends and I had grown up with more of a sense of bodily autonomy we would have said something about that creepy high school teacher who had a habit of touching us in non sexual ways ( squeezing our shoulders , etc) who still comes up in conversation 45 years later.
The kid who is raised to believe they don’t have to accept unwanted touching is going to react differently to being told they have to see a doctor they are uncomfortable with than a kid who has been spent their life being told to let Aunt Gracie hug you and kiss you, even though you never met her before today. They might have to do it anyway because there is no other option and the benefits outweigh the costs - but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any cost and the kid is just being silly and should get over it.
I don’t think that fear of abuse would necessarily be the main reason that a teen would not want a doctor of a certain gender. Even adults may have strong gender preferences for their doctors. That’s especially true for embarrassing or intimate procedures. For instance, if a man has a urological issue, he may want to only see a male doctor. Even for just a physical, he may have a strong preference for it to be a man. That preference has nothing to do with a fear that a woman doctor would abuse him or anything like that.
My wife is a Nurse Practitioner in a Residency program. She teaches IUD insertion to residents. I asked her.
If a minor (or any patient) was uncomfortable with a male resident doing an IUD insertion, my wife would sideline the resident for that procedure and do the procedure herself.
It wasn’t even a close call to my wife.
In a practice or an area with only male providers? That’s a much tougher one, IMHO.
Let’s focus on this, which I think all here can agree on. No one is suggesting that a family goes out of their way to force a child to have an experience they would prefer to avoid to toughen them up. Or not allow her to choose to see a female provider if all else was equal. Nor do I suspect would anyone say that a family should become homeless in order to comply with a child’s preference for not seeing a male physician.
So how much unequal crosses each of your lines?
Assume providers are all otherwise equally qualified? Obviously that is a big deal if not.
The reality of this situation is NOT that the child could give up flute lessons to cover it. But use that as hypothetical number one? The kid likes flute. The parents feel that music lessons are very important. Even when the kid doesn’t. The other sisters each take an instrument too. Would you have the kid give up flute to cover it?
How much of an additional expense to a middle class family on tight budget, trying to fund the 529s and the retirement plans, to pay for all the kids music lessons or other extracurricular activities, and maybe have a family vacation once a year, would you feel is worth giving up so this teen girl doesn’t have to deal with the discomfort of a male physician seeing “a private area”?
Is it worth all the kids giving up extracurriculars? The parents have no date nights for the year or two? No new clothes for the two years? Getting behind on planned contributions to the college and retirement funds? What level of sacrifice exceeds your tolerance? Which sacrifices would you choose?
Just FWIW any patient uncomfortable with any resident learning any procedure on them absolutely should expect the same.
Not even a close call.
That said, there has, in recent years, been an exceptionally well-publicized case, in which a doctor, Larry Nassar, who was affiliated with the U.S. national gymnastics team, was convicted on numerous counts of sexual abuse against underage girls (i.e., young gymnasts).
It may be possible that the girl in the OP’s story has heard of Nassar, or similar stories, and that may be a factor in her refusal to be examined or treated by a man.
Spoilered, though trying to not be too graphic:
During routine physical therapy sessions, he used a finger to sexually assault the girls, under the guise of “pressure point” therapy.
Girls are being told that if they use a bathroom stall in the same bathroom as a woman who may or may not presently or formerly have had a penis, they will be sexually molested. So it stands to reason that a 14 year old in 2025 may have some fears about men, regardless of what actual real cases they may be aware of.
(Nooooo idea about the parents’ politics. And it wasn’t part of the original question. But still, kids are listening.)
Part of the problem with talking/coaching them through an experience and then they do get through and nothing bad happens. Seems okay. Is always going to look successful to the practitioner.
Did they REALLY have a chance to say no? Or were they told, well it’s going to be what I say. So they do as you instruct and respond as you indicate they should. And leave you believing, yeah it was fine. Even if it really wasn’t though.
This thread is almost an object lesson in why female doctors are so necessary. Your child is telling you something important. And you cannot, will not hear her because you want her to be otherwise. You know better what she can withstand, at this moment, better than she does? Or can’t really hear what she’s saying maybe?
‘Talking someone through’, overlaps large with ‘pushed them into’. ‘Fine when it was over’, overlaps large with ‘just need to get out of here’ before I break down. This seems like it should be self evident to any practitioner.
So what would you do to a 14yr old female patient saying, “i really don’t want this, my dad is making me. Please don’t make me!”
Can she say no? If she can’t say no, are you talking her through it? Or bullying her into it? Does it matter to you? Is she an individual, or is the answer always to convince them they can do this?
Part of being an adult is asserting control over one’s own body. A teenager who is doing so should not be discouraged. Yes, the teenager should have explained the consequences of their choices, but another part of being an adult is respecting other adults’ choices about their own body. Parents and medical personnel need to show that they themselves are adults by respecting the teenager’s choice.
Yes she can.
Care to participate in the questions I asked a few posts up? Is there a point of costs for a middle class family that you would say that the girl can be asked to deal with the discomfort of having a male provider see her “private area”? Over the course of two years, a dozen or so visits, testing, out of network can add up to the multiple thousands.
I readily admit that my experience biases me. I’ve had boys who don’t want even a male doctor to see their “private area” and are freaked out that it is part of the exam. Usually we talk them through it. If they are scarred by that process it is news to me. Girls less often as we have several female docs and the anxious girls see them. But this sort of anxiety is incredibly common and endocrinologists manage it as a matter of course.
I honestly don’t know. Skipping the exams & treatment isn’t compatible with my parental duty of care, so that’s out, of course
My first instinct would be protectiveness and sensitivity toward my daughter (who is the same age). I might consider a long-haul drive to a female practitioner b/c I’m soft like that. At least on the first read.
I do think it’s worth talking things out though. There is a case to be made that it won’t always be possible in life to avoid male doctors like this, so working though the objection is something to be done earlier rather than later. Maybe with the help of an age-appropriate therapist (hate using the term “child psychologist” but that’s what I’m thinking of).