Spring is in the air – and so are the musings of Click and Clack. Check out their latest article titled How To Ask Your Mechanic Out On A Date. There are sooo many mechanic-doctor job parallels, everything from the “checking under your hood,” to “preventive maintenance” – parallels which, of course, lead to the inevitable Doc Gurley spin-off – How To Ask A Doctor Out On A Date…
Dear Doc Gurley (writes a loyal, imaginary reader),
If a doctor is not wearing a wedding ring, is that a true indication of marital status? I think my best
- Image via Wikipedia
friend’s doctor is hot, but I’m wondering if maybe there’s no ring because working on cars bodies would destroy it. Depending on your response to the ring issue, I’m also concerned that if this doc took me up on a date offer, but it didn’t work, my wise-cracking, totally BFF sidekick (with a heart of gold) would be out an awesome doc. What do you think? Should I go out on a limb and risk losing both my pride and my friend’s healthcare?
Signed, A Mechanic
Dear Mechanic,
Putting oneself out in there in the hopes of attaining happiness is always a butterfly-in-the-stomach moment. You’re right to review a checklist of items to make sure you’re taking the right step:
1) Whose doctor is this? Saying this is “my friend’s” doctor isn’t like saying “my friend got drunk and woke up in a room with underwear hanging from a chandelier and now he she um, I want to know if someone can get pregnant like that” – now is it? If so, be warned, asking your own doctor out is a big no – no. For lots of good (and law-enforced) reasons. If this doctor has seen you in a back-open gown sitting on a paper sheet, expect a flat-out rejection (but NOT – necessarily - because of the breezy view of your backside – instead it’s because this doc is made of decent, non-felony material).
2) Analyze the (al)lure – you may want to know how deeply your doc is leveraged. Nowadays, the myth of the rich doctor has tumbled faster than a Madoff investment scheme. Well, more accurately, that’s true if your doc is a primary care, internist, pediatrician or family medicine type. For those professions, we’re not just talking dismal future earnings, either. A graduate from a pricey private medical school could be $300,000 in debt when handed a diploma – and then have to start a 4-6 year mandatory job (residency) that pays, per hour, less than minimum wage. You may be wondering, so how does the debt float all those years? Well, medical school debts don’t exactly float, they grow - to Jabba-the-Hut proportions. If you’re after the lovely hot doctor because you get starry dollar signs in your eyes, you might want to stick with fellow mechanics, who probably make more per hour (and are rarely on-call at 3am).
3) The ring issue. Ah, you’re right in thinking that maybe a wedding ring is not a good indicator of marital status. If she’s a surgeon, she might not wear a ring to work because of the problems of scrubbing in over and over. If your doctor is an out-patient or non-surgeon doc, he might not wear one even if he’s married because he cares about his patients – rings contribute to the spread of nasty, resistant germs, even when people wash often and well. So a ring is not a sure-fire indicator of marital status among bare-handed medical types. How to find out? Just ask. Doctors spend their entire days asking near-strangers incredibly personal questions point-blank. Even at a dinner party, your doctor probably won’t even blink. And if your doctor follows up with a “why do you want to know?” you’ve got a great lead-in to ask him out.
Or, if you’re not ready for that yet, just slouch and tell her, all casual, “No reason – just wondering.” She’ll get the hint.
4) The BFF-doc triangle. Here’s the deal – doctors need love too. If your doc is a relatively young woman, she may be used to “scaring off” potential dates simply by saying she’s a doc. In medical school a bunch of us women would go to bars and gauge the difference between telling guys (after the inevitable “what do you do?”) that we were alternately doctors, or nurses. Let’s just say the difference was more-than-a-little striking. If you’re a woman, telling a new flirty friend you’re a doctor, even in these enlightened times, is often followed by “you mean, like, a real doctor?” followed by a sudden interest in texting-while-wandering-off.
The problem is, though, people feel strongly about their doctors. If your hot doc is your friend’s doctor, ask your BFF straight up how they feel about you asking for a date. BFFs are definitely hard to find. And sadly, nowadays, so are good doctors. If your BFF says it’s a no-go, don’t despair. A simple job change, or open-enrollment, or even healthcare reform, could leave your friend, like so many Americans, back at the drawing board, looking for a new place to get healthcare. While you wouldn’t wish such a thing on anyone, it happens way too often these days -a dark cloud whose silver lining is that you’re now free to ask out your hot doc.
Some people think doctors should only mate with their own kind. Others shudder at the thought. Do you have (or know) an extreme hybrid couple (non-doctor plus doctor)? Share your doctor-dating stories in the comments section below!
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Doc Gurley is a Board-certified Internist physician and the only Harvard Medical School graduate to have been awarded a Shoney’s Ten-Step Pin for documented excellence in waitressing. 
[...] ask a doctor out – Doc Gurley [...]
I’m a nurse, and no offense, I would never date a doctor. Nurses see first hand what misery it can be to be a doc. We hear the non-stop bitching about the pay, hours, patients, nurses etc at work, so why would we want to take that home? Plus, I have to take orders from doctors on the job, but that sh-t won’t fly at home. BTW, I have a young, single,female, pediatrician friend who needs a date. Know anyone?
Try following up being a doctor with being a HOSPICE doctor. I last had a date 8 years ago.
I’m a doctor, and no offense, I would never marry a nurse. Why? They are undereducated, smart alecks who want our authority and respect but want to do it without our hours, our dedication, our back-breaking work schedule, or knowledge base.
While the field of medicine has a few bad doctors amongst its wide majority of honest, hardworking and incredibly talented physicians, nurses are the opposite.
There a few and far between number of competent nurses, while the majority are lazy, fat, undereducated, know-nothings who talk smack, and have a natural allergy to work. The hallmark of a good hospital is not the medical staff, its the ratio of advanced nurses with graduate degrees who actually give a damn about the patients versus the incompetent dangerous two-bit RN’s roaming the halls not caring while people are dying.
The medical system is breaking down because of the growing power of the ancillary people like nurses while the true hero and natural leader of medicine, the physician, loses power, prestige, and financial status.
Well, America, you will soon get your wish. Enjoy.
Glad to have found your blog through KevinMD! I’m married to a doctor and I’m not one myself, so I obviously don’t believe you should exclusively date/marry your own kind. I think my husband and I balance each other out well. I have a blog about medical marriages, but I’m really fascinated with the dating scene for a doctor. I can imagine it’s rather complicated.
One of my husband’s co-workers, a male first year surgery resident, is on match.com. He met his current girlfriend through match.com and it has been interesting to see them interact. It’s hard for them to get to know each other because the guy is always working. I have no idea how he even had time to go on dates with multiple match.com people, but that’s another story.
Apparently, before he met his current girlfriend he was trying to date people in the hospital. He even brought a potential girlfriend (a scrub nurse, I believe) to an autopsy that all the surgery residents were asked to attend. Yeah, he’s a bit out there.
Anyway, I look forward to stories from others about dating a doctor!
Dear Bea,
I met my husband in the last month of my internship – back when we still had every-third-night call, so that, out of 72 straight hours, I was out of the hospital (and able to sleep/manage my whole life) for only two ten-hour stretches of time. My husband (non-medical) had NO CLUE how little time I had, and would just show up to see if I wanted to catch a bite or hang out, right as I was staggering around trying to find out if I had enough laundry to make it through another day. My internship partner that month met her future husband then too – we came to work and carried each others’ beepers so we could take turns napping in the call room. The nice thing is that it sure is a litmus test – once my husband figured out what was going on, he started bringing in wonderful food for the whole team.
Damn…
You should have written this article before I got into Medical School!
Another one down and out in the race of evolution!
Dear Pranab,
Don’t despair! Despite the dating challenges, almost all docs make it into the gene pool (some may argue that’s not a great thing, but I beg to differ!). Some creep in, some wade confidently, and some flat-out dive. Heading into residency, the last year of medical school can have an almost palpable sense of desperation in the air, with people pairing up right and left – the week of graduation/mass weddings saw many of my female medical school friends transform, in four days, from, say Betty Jones to Dr. Smith (a tad disorienting, when someone’s shouting a completely unfamiliar name at you in the hospital!). Even if you feel the pressure, what’s most important is to grab the right someone. They’re worth the effort.
So MY BFF wants to set me up with the OB-GYN who performed her C-Section, who is not her regular doc but was on-call when she needed needed a C. Her husband went to high school with him and she says he’s the best – and left her with a healthy baby and only a tiny scar.
I’m a little skeeved out by the OB-GYN aspect. But only a little.
Any insight?
Dear Shasta,
Docs need love too – and a good guy with a great work ethic, vouched for by a high-school buddy and “sponsored” by your BFF – well, that sounds like a winner to me! If you do give it a try, be prepared from some schedule-limitations – if he says he’s on-call, that’s not necessarily code for “I’m not that into you,” especially if he’s making himself available is his (relatively rare) free time. You’ll get a sense of his call schedule early on. Also, the world of social media is a bit constrained for docs – it’s just not okay to answer your cell when you’re seeing a patient. So be prepared for more delays in the text/call area than are usual in the heated non-doc world of romance. I hope it works out!
Doc Gurley
P.S. As far as being a bit skeeved about the job – my advice is 1) don’t think too much about the details, and 2) at least you can rest easy that he knows where all the fun parts are.
I married a doctor and I incurred a ton of debt! Dating a doctor can be an entirely new experience because of the types of stories they may tell at the dinner table. The important thing is to make sure that you understand that physicians go through a tremendous amount of pressure/stress at work (well, it really depends on their specialty).
I’m a paeds reg studying for exams; my partner’s a primary school performing arts teacher. Last week he seized a textbook from my hands and hurled it across the room. Ok, so there were pictures of, well, scrotal oedema and phimosis and straddle injuries (or “that creepy mutant kiddie porn you like” as he calls it). And I suppose we were in bed. I had to promise not to study in bed ever, ever, ever again. Damnit, this relationship with a non-medical person takes a lot of negotiation!
I’m a psychiatry registrar in Nigeria. I found out right in medical school that the expectations I had about the doctor is simply a mirage and I had been struggling with the job ever since. While I love the fact that I help in solving people’s health problem, I found it difficult to accept that I have to bend over in giving my time and then studying endlessly only to get what looks like money just enough to get peanuts. A couple of my friends have found their way to Europe and U.S to make life better but found out that apart from the relative difference due to the devalued currency of our home country, the medical profession does not hold much comparatively with other professions in their countries of abode.
Now the motivation is so low, one wonders how long one has to be struggling to make ends meet and yet spend so much on professional examinations that one does not even have enough time and motivation to study for given the return on investment that one will get. Are we in a rat race? Are we an endangered specie?
I relate a Shoney’s tale. As a geologist I was assigned to a NE Alabama project in the early 80s, living for a month in Carrolton GA.
One morning we guys discussed, and decided to have breakfast at Western Village rather than Shoney’s, the two being the only realistic, equivalent breakfast choices available.
I stood in the breakfast buffet line at Western Village behind a corpulent couple, in excess of 300 lbs each, talking about the repast. The wife piled her plate with eggs, bacon, pancakes, sausages, toast and butter, saying “this looks Good.”
Her similarly piled spouse remarked “…sure beats that s**t over t’ Shoney’s!”
I was married to a Doctor for seven years(separated for 5). He came from a family of Doctors also. My medical knowledge was from spending a number of years doing Ambo work, aside from that and a passion for medical knowledge I obviously wasn’t a Doctor.
Take away the label Doctor, they are still human, still have the same deficits we humans have and an extra load of external stressors.
I was with my husband while he was a registrar studying for a Fellowship. years of study and stress added to an already highly strung guy.
We share a daughter and its funny as quite often if she is unwell, he usually relies on my assessment of her over his own.
It isnt easy being married to this profession during the study years, however it does ease once graduated to Specialist.
Take away the job and they are still just Human with a higher divorce etc rate for the population.:)
I date a doctor (he is anesthesia)for one year now. I don’t know if I want to break up with him or not. I am just feeling sorry for him because he is working weird hours. He has no time for us or sometimes says call but never did until next day. He makes me feel confused and disappointed. He always said to me that he loves me and never makes time. I think dating a doctor is hard because he/she has no time, busy schedule, and in his/her own world. I also believed in dating doctor, dentist, nurse, or anyone, if both willing to make an effort or time to be together, then the relationship will be perfect. So I will try to be understanding, loving, caring, and patient.
i happen to think this specialist i have to see rarely is so attractive are we not allowed to date since i’m a patient??
Doc Gurley (and other readers who might want to weigh in),
I started seeing a specialist for severe chronic pain about a year ago when my condition was so severe I was certain I was going to die. He was recommended by a friend of a friend. Although I have never been fond of doctors, I immediately liked him very much. Since then, with his help, I am almost completely recovered. I do not like him because he is a doctor, I like him because he is a wonderful human being. Were he a million dollars in debt, I would not care. I like him because he always does the right thing, he cares about the environment, he’s brilliant, good humored, and we finish each other’s sentences. I think had I met him anywhere else we probably would have started dating immediately, but I’ve not asked him out because until recently I needed him to be my doctor so much more desperately than I needed him to be my boyfriend. That is changing lately, and I do not think I will need him to be my specialist much longer. I am not sure the laws about specialists dating their patients in Wisconsin. Where can I find this? I’d ask if I should approach him about it or not, but if the law would permit him to see me, I would have no insecurities about my ability to approach him about it, and his ability to deal with it.
I believe it is a different ball game when dating a dr. I dated a med student who was still in the process of finding where he was doing his residency. I didn’t look at him as a dr.even though he did remind me though. I knew him before he even went to med school and we were reacquainted after. I thought we fell in love, but he never wanted to commit knowing he couldn’t promise me a relationship that I deserve. And I understood his time would be occupied and he may want to date inter hospital staff for convenience. We had to let each other go regardless of what we wanted. If he were not a dr. , perhaps we would be together today. I was understanding at first and then doubt of his honesty and resentment stormed in in order for me to get over him. I miss him even today. I wish it didn’t have to be this way and I pray for the day he realizes Im the only girl for him, regardless of my degree. I loved/love him like no other. We didn’t even talk a lot of the time we just held each other and had fun that said to me, we just enjoyed each others presence. He is my soulmate and I would deal with the cons to be with him any day, because I understand them.
I’ve been dating a doctor for the past 3 months. At first I was intimidated because of his profession and the fact that he is 12 years older. When I first met him I was only an intern at his hospital. Before I dated him I was afraid to talk to doctors because of the idea that they are so “important” and was afraid of being laughed at for saying something stupid. However, he was the first to approach me and to show interest. The more time I spend with him the more I realize that being a doctor is just a day job. It definitely does not make the person. No matter how hard of a day he has he always makes time to spend with me or talk to me over the phone. He does what he can to be there for me and to support me with my studies. I believe that if a person truly does care for you, then he/she will do everything is their power to make it work. I recently met his family and I am very excited about the future. Even if he was a school teacher (not that there’s anything wrong with it- I’m a social worker student) I would still be dating him. The profession does not make the person.
I’d love to meet a doctor! I like to think that he’d be very interesting.
I love your website, Doc Gurley. On mine, I have a few pages that discuss doctors and dating, especially in regard to the practicality and ethical aspects of it. If you’re interested, see the section of “Miscellaneous ER topics” on this page:
http://www.er-doctor.com/er_qa.html
I also discuss doctors and dating in two of my free e-books, True Emergency Room Stories (www.erbook.net/erbook1.htm) and Love & Lust in the ER (www.erlove.com/er_book.php).
I’ve dated plenty of doctors while working at a hospital for 10 years. Interns have very little time available. Surgeon hours are better. The hardest thing for many doctors is that their level of intelligence exceeds the dating pool and they struggle with normal Joe/Jane in terms of communication. Long term relationships with normal Joe/Jane is dismal and aggrevating unless the Dr. is seeking someone that is just providing love and compassion.
I loved learning new things and intelligent conversation with the people that I dated. Had two long relationships with docs, one relationship ended because of my co-workers jealousy.
Asking a doc out, well typically they’ll give you a hint that they are interested.
[...] She covers all kinds of interesting tidbits on her own blog, too, from the informative (5 Crucial (and Weird) Whooping Cough Facts to Know) to the controversial (Airline Fees at the Doctor’s Office), with plenty of “funny” in between (How to Ask a Doctor Out). [...]