‘My name Borat, I like sex‘, that is the telling introduction of Borat Sagdiyev in the film of the same name. It takes place in a village in Kazakhstan. We see Urkin, the village rapist, caged on a wooden pallet with wheels, pulled by his wife. „Naughty, naughty”, indicates Borat. The local daycare center is a mud pit, equipped with Kalashnikovs. Borat is having sex with his sister in front of his house. A cow lives in his house.
During one of my internships, a specialist invariably referred to me as ‘that Borat’, referring to my Montenegrin origins. One of my columns in a university magazine had displeased him. I laughed about it with my fellow interns in the evenings. Afterwards I had little to do with him anymore.
However, the comparison continues to rankle. I watch the film again on YouTube. First: an unforeseen jolt of nostalgia. In the warm living rooms of my youth I regularly sang along to the opening song of the film, Caje Sukarije sung by the legendary Esma Redzepova, although I didn’t understand any of the words. But she is not Kazakh, she is Macedonian Roma. Then: the villagers. They do not have the Asian facial features you expect from a Kazakh. They look more like Roma. From the comments below the video I learn that the scene was not shot in Kazakhstan but in a Romanian village.
Kazakhs will therefore not recognize anything from Borat. Roma will recognize the disdain with which their culture is viewed. I recognize how layered and clumsy the specialist’s reference to me as ‘that Borat’ was.
A disciplinary judge recently decided to cancel the BIG registration of an internist who engaged in serious sexual misconduct for one year, instead of deleting him completely, as was the result of an earlier judgment. The internist secretly filmed female interns in their underwear and touched their pubic areas during ‘ultrasound education’. One year: a sabbatical.
The victims are colleagues who started their internships at the same time as me. In the early spring of your doctor’s career, you should be concerned about whether you know everything about your patient’s stool, not about your safety. I know how devastating the experience is and how that insecurity seeps into other facets of your life.
They achieved a scoop by going to the disciplinary court. Never before has an intern filed a complaint against a doctor. That shows courage. All the more poignant the publication of a large survey of Medical Contact among doctors and interns, where it appears that more than half are dealing with inappropriate behavior.
Lawyer and doctor Ten Hag emphasizes that the Central Disciplinary Board has shown with its ruling that it takes the matter seriously and hopes for “a more accessible climate to raise the alarm about behavior that is unacceptable.” General board member Lars Nijman van The Medical Student (an association with 15,000 members) fears the opposite. Whose deed.
In two months the excommunicado back again. We must take comfort in Lady Justice’s blindness. We often do not report wrong behavior because of the severe dependency position, for fear of career consequences. The doctors who go to the media almost always tell their story anonymously. Their eloquent counterweight are the trade representatives. Although well-intentioned, this process shifts the emphasis to solutions and puts complainants’ stories into perspective.
That’s why I’m now sharing my own story openly. To the bullies in career land, I say: see my green sweater and my curls. Remember my name: Borat Sagdiyev.
Dino Gacevic works in the emergency department of a Rotterdam hospital. He temporarily replaces Karin Amrakoetrin.