Nursing Mother Goes to Court for Exam Time
from the N*Y T*mes
September 10, 2007
Nursing Mother Goes to Court for Exam Time
One test stands between Sophie Currier and her Harvard medical degree and a prestigious residency.
But Ms. Currier says she runs a high risk of failing the test unless the National Board of Medical Examiners gives her additional break time to pump breast milk for her 4-month-old daughter.
The board has refused the request, and on Thursday, Ms. Currier asked a Massachusetts Superior Court judge to order it to give her extra time on each of two days of testing, plus a private room with a power outlet so she can express her milk in private with an electric pump. (The nine-hour exam, on clinical knowledge, allows 45 minutes for breaks.)
The case, to be heard on Wednesday, is a harbinger of what could be a growing problem. More women than ever are studying medicine, and they must take three exams to become doctors. At the same time, groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly encourage breast-feeding for its health and developmental benefits.
Ms. Currier, 33, of Brookline, Mass., wrote to the medical examiners’ board in June to request the extra time, saying she needed to pump milk to avoid painful breast engorgement and mastitis, an infection stemming from blocked milk ducts.
In a letter dated July 11, Catherine Farmer, the board’s manager of disability services, responded that it could accommodate only conditions covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act. She added that Ms. Currier could spend some of her break time pumping breast milk in another testing room. Testing rooms are monitored and have glass walls.
Ms. Farmer said on Friday that the board’s privacy policy prohibited it from commenting on individual cases.
Ms. Currier, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard, has received some accommodation from the board for dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She can take the nine-hour test over two days instead of one, but she is seeking an additional 60-minute break on each day.
Dr. Alison Stuebe, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a member of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, supported Ms. Currier’s request in an affidavit filed with the court.
“Forty-five minutes,” Dr. Stuebe wrote, “is insufficient time for a nursing mother of a 4-month-old to eat, drink, use the restroom and to fully and properly express breast milk using an electric pump two times over the course of eight hours.”
If Ms. Currier is forced to delay taking the exam, “it will cause her significant hardship” by delaying her ability to earn a living and to begin repaying school loans, and possibly leading to the loss of clinical knowledge and skills, Dr. Stuebe said.
Ms. Currier said she was already feeling pressure because she took the test in April, when she was eight months’ pregnant, and failed it by a few points. She has been offered a residency in clinical pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital in November, but cannot accept it unless she passes this test, which she plans to take on Sept. 15.
“This should be as simple as ducking into the bathroom to pump the milk,” said Ms. Currier, who is feeding her daughter breast milk exclusively.
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***the United States is one of only four out of 168 countries studied to not have some form of paid family leave for new moms. We join Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, and Lesotho in not having that policy in place. ***
And angry that she even has to do this. WTF?
I hope the courts side with her, but if not I bet ya a $100 that there will be protests!
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
This is where my conservative side comes out. Pregnant mothers, nursing mothers, mothers of wee ones (what I call under age 4 kids) we can't do it all, for goodness sake. I don't understand why we think we should. Being a mother of a baby is just as important as being a doctor, I don't understand why she would put this kind of stress on herself or her baby. I guess I do understand because I did it, I put an incredible amount of stress on myself sometimes when my kids were small, especially with my oldest, and I wish I hadn't. In less than a year she could wean or have her baby on a few solids and thus it would nurse less.
at any rate I wonder how this will be handled. They can't make pregnancy or being a nursing mother a disability...they probably will give her the extra time but have a special monitor to follow her into the bathroom to make sure she doesn't look at notes and cheat. I'm thinking that's their biggest concern.
MSPmedia
People began to become successful the minute they decide to be
~Harvey Mackay
...Uhh, because she wants to both be a doctor and be a mother.
This is virtually impossible if you don't do both at the same time.
College + Med school + residency = what, 30? Your chances of birth defects are already increased at that age, no offense to you older mamas. And if she waited at any stage of that process, it becomes MUCH harder to get from point A to point K because you forget and get out of the learning routine, etc. etc.
Besides that, she probably wants to provide a doctor's life (and paycheck) to her kid. Why should she have to have a sugar daddy (or mama) in her life to do that?
25/MN and WA. Queer, veg, single, AP mama to DD2.5.
isn't whether or not she is compromising her motherhood by becoming a doctor or vice versa. the LEGAL issue at hand is whether or not nursing mothers will receive accomodation that will allow them to do things like become doctors on something at least vaguely resembling a levelish playing field OR whether they will instead essentially be required by the inflexibility of law and bureaucracy to ACTUALLY, MEASURABLY {abbreviated lactation or abbreviated time as a licensed, practicing physician} compromise either their motherhood or their medical careers.
it's like, if a woman doesn't want to work outside the home after becoming a mother, that's groovy, but that doesn't mean it should be a legal or de facto requirement that mothers of young children canNOT work outside the home {like it used to be when supreme court justice ruth bader ginsberg lost her job when she had her first child}. or in another example, if a woman doesn't want to vote, that's one thing, but if women as a class are NOT allowed to vote, that's a whole 'nother issue.
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
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