BOSTON (AP) – All that stands between a would-be doctor from Brookline and the medical degree she’s been working toward for five years is one grueling exam – and her commitment to breast-feed her infant daughter.
Sophie Currier is scheduled to begin her medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital this fall, but she needs to pass the nine-hour clinical knowledge exam given by the National Board of Medical Examiners.
The exam allows a total of just 45 minutes in breaks, and the board has refused to give Currier the extra time she says she needs to pump milk from her breasts, The Boston Globe reported.
Currier, 33, is nursing her 7-week-old daughter, LDea, and if she does not pump milk every two or three hours, she could suffer blocked ducts, the discomfort of hard breasts or an infection.
After asking the board for extra time to pump her breasts, she said she was told special accommodations were made only for disabilities covered by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
In a statement faxed to the Globe, Catherine Farmer, the board’s manager of disability services, wrote that the disabilities act doesn’t define lactation, breast-feeding and breast pumping as disabilities.
She also wrote that “since the general testing room is shared by multiple examinees, the use of a breast pump inside the testing room during the examination would be disruptive to other examinees and is not permitted. Furthermore, the testing rooms do not provide privacy since they are visually monitored.”
Farmer added that test takers could use their break time for breast pumping, and could gain extra time for breaks if they finished sections of the test early.
Breast-feeding advocates said the board’s stance was unreasonable. Dr. Ruth Lawrence, chair of the breast-feeding section of the American Academy of Pediatrics, called it “totally inhumane and insensitive.”
She said breast-feeding is a physical need that should be filled just like the need to eat.
“One would hope they would accommodate this particular physiological need not just for the individual being examined, but for her child,” she said.
Currier’s problem comes as the federal government works to increase breast-feeding as a way to improve public health, but society has shown reluctance to support breast-feeding, particularly in public or workplaces. Last year, for example, a flight attendant expelled a nursing mother from a plane in Vermont, leading hundreds of mothers to stage “nurse-ins” at airports.
Forty-seven states have passed laws that protect the rights of nursing mothers, including by allowing them to breast-feed in public or skip jury duty and its unpredictable breaks, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But Massachusetts has no such laws.
State Senator Susan C. Fargo, a Lincoln Democrat, has filed a bill that would legalize nursing in public and encourage employers to support breast-feeding and pumping.
Currier, who has two days to take the test because of severe dyslexia, said she’ll request an extra 20 minutes of break time per day – the minimum she thinks she can manage. She said her experience makes it clear why many women may not be making it to the top tiers of science and medicine.
“It’s so clearly obvious why women are dropping out in their 30s ,” she said. “It’s plain as day.”
AP-ES-06-23-07 1542EDT
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