The Implications of being a young, black, female medical student in the NHS

Does this picture look familiar? If you did not know that nurses in England actually have a uniform, you might be tempted to say it matches the description given in the title. Add a strange accent (like mine) for good measure and you would be 99.999999% convinced that I was a nurse if you saw me on a ward.... Right?

Well you would be wrong. Like many of the older, Caucasian patients I see everyday. Perhaps that is an unfair stereotype but I suppose that is the point I am trying to make.

Your experiences shape your expectations of the world around you. 

Patients expect me to be a nurse because I fit the profile of those they have encountered, while I usually brace myself for the tentative enquiry about what I 'actually do' or 'what I am going to become when I graduate?' They tend to give me a range of options at this point: a pharmacist, a nurse or a physiotherapist (if I am lucky). They almost never include the possibility that I might become a doctor and are more often than not shocked when I say that a medical student is a student doctor. If I was a 6 foot tall, Caucasian, British male, I wonder whether I would have to have this conversation as frequently as I do now.

Some may take offence and say this is a remnant of a time where racism was commonplace and few women were physicians. But I would not go so far as to label it as frank racism. Thankfully, after 4 years in the system I have never experienced discrimination as a result of these well-intentioned assumptions. However, I cannot say it has had absolutely no effect on me. One medical student friend of mine says she tries not to wear navy blue (the colour senior nurses wear) so as to avoid confusion. I have adopted this approach and as a rule, I always, ALWAYS introduce myself as a student doctor to avoid the ambiguity of the title 'medical student'.

In no way do I belittle the role of nurses in providing care but it seems we have a bit of catching up to do with a profession as dynamic as medicine.