Separate Waiting Rooms
Just because it is the oldest request in the world, and we have been talking about this on blogs for at least 18 years and on bulletin boards before that (so… no… People magazine. This isn’t an original idea), it’s still worth talking about: separate waiting rooms at the OB/GYN for pregnant vs. non-pregnant patients.
I was trying to come up with other situations where separating people would be compassionate (as opposed to the pediatrician’s office, which separates sick kids from wellness visits to lessen the spread of germs), where the reason for the visit would be common enough that many people would be impacted daily vs. an individual situation.
Would it be equally awful to be shunted to a different waiting room? To watch some people go into one room and feel even more left out, knowing that this is your waiting room for the time being, with the desire to be in the other waiting room? In protecting people’s feelings, would we inadvertently create different, equally terrible ones?
Those were my thoughts over the last 18 years of thinking about this.
6 comments
Hmmm… I think it’s would be awesome if there were two types of practices, one OB and one GYN. You’ve made me think about this so much my comment became a post, so I’m off to do that. Oh man, I can’t believe People thought this was a new thought!
My last OB was not Gyn. She was a GP though. And for some of time I was with her she shared a wait room with Gyn.
One other place that it would be compassionate to separate people is surgical waiting rooms, especially pediatric ones. I mean, no one likes their kid to have surgery, but we had one experience in pre-op where some families were taking pictures of their kids in “their cute little gowns!” and we were barely holding our shit together. (And then! there were freaking *harps* playing!) If I’m sitting there waiting on my kid in a serious surgery, I don’t want to listen to Marcia chattering away on the phone. And if Marcia needs to be on the phone talking about her latest nail appointment, that’s fine for Marcia, but you can almost see the tension in some people about to snap if she makes one more call. Giving separate spaces (quiet rooms or something) would be compassionate.
And I think the same could hold true for OB/GYN (which should just be separate specialities!), where you can have spaces where people can self-sort. Maybe an open area, and then an area with more cubicle-style pods for visual privacy. (Even pregnant people are sometimes there for really upsetting reason!)
You’re right, Mel, this is no secret to anyone who had a loss pre-TikTok! I *think* my ob-gyn tended to do his maternity checkups in the morning and his gynecology patients in the afternoon, but it wasn’t always possible to keep the two groups separate — last-minute emergencies, urgent appointments, cancellations that opened up spots for others, etc. Still, I appreciated it whenever I was there and realized there weren’t any (or many) pregnant bellies nearby! (especially in the first few years after my loss).
This brings back memories of thin walls and hearing heartbeats from other waiting rooms…
Oh good grief, the ignorance of thinking that is a new idea! It was always a major gripe on the ectopic messageboards at the turn of the century. 22 years ago, I was shunted into morning clinics as my second ectopic was monitored, surrounded by pregnant bellies and the occasional child or baby. I often wondered if the drs and nurses had any idea how traumatic it all was for me. And then I wondered about how many of those with the pregnant bellies were finding it the same – maybe they had complications, or had terrible diagnoses, and were forced to sit next to healthy pregnancies. Or to people like me glaring at their bellies. (Though most of the time I was looking at the floor. These days, of course, I’d be looking at my phone so distraction would be easier.) And then of course, there’s always the healthy pregnancy going into a scan, and coming out with shocking news. So it is terribly complicated.
I was told my second pregnancy was also ectopic under posters about stages of pregnancy at the hospital. And when I was being examined prior to being told I needed a hysterectomy, I did so on a bed that had a wall of babies behind it. That was like a kick in the teeth too. It doesn’t stop at pregnancy diagnoses.