questioning his medical or operational judgment, Marty found their presence to be an intrusion and a violation of his privacy rights as a physician. He was arrogant. He hadnât yet realized that his doctor-as-god armor was penetrated the moment he took on abortion.
We could have listened to the critiques of the Department of Health respectfully and asked for time to work it out, but the inspection quickly deteriorated into a power struggle between Marty and the surveyors. A week after their visit, we received a long list of deficiencies. We were informed that our clinic would be closed down until they were corrected. Marty was furious. âWho the hell are these civil servants to tell me what to do?â he ranted. He felt that the report was unfair, and that keeping the clinic open might not be worth the hassle.
Not having a doctorâs ego to defend, I wholly disagreed. Close Flushing Womenâs down? Weâd just gotten started! Here was the first real challenge to the survival of this nascent project that I was beginning to call my own. I was already too invested to give up so quickly. The Department of Healthâs survey was simply a report card we had failed. I was a good student; I was determined to get an A.
I read the Department of Healthâs report until I had it memorized, then made an appointment with Dr. Jean Pakter, the head of the Department of Health, to discuss solutions. I wanted to understand exactly how I was expected to correct
the deficiencies. She was responsive to my earnest questions and obvious determination to fully meet the requirements.
During the four months that Flushing Womenâs was closed, Marty was again promoted to the position of medical director of a larger HIP group on Kissena Boulevardâone whose physical space, I pointed out to him, answered the environmental deficiencies in the Department of Health report. Marty would be too busy with his new responsibilities to devote much time to Flushing Womenâs, but I convinced him that under my direction the clinic could rent basement space at this new medical group and work on getting appropriate staffing, beds, and medical equipment to address our programmatic weaknesses. Most importantly, we could reopen.
After moving to Kissena Boulevard and working out a plan of correction, we were once again inspected by the Department of Health. This time, we passed.
Â
I WAS STILL going to school and taking classes between clinic days. I had graduated from Queens College Phi Beta Kappa and entered a graduate program in social psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. In college I had been distanced from my peers by my age and personality; in graduate school I was distanced from the other students due to the fact that my time outside of school was spent operating an abortion clinic. It didnât bother me, though. I wasnât in school to make friends.
I encountered a hurdle early on in the program: I failed a statistics class. I went to the chair of the department requesting permission to retake it later in the curriculum, but he refused to give me any leeway. Not having any real option of another PhD program, and thinking that I was destined to fail, I decided to resign from the doctoral program. With
a great deal of sadness and anxiety I carried my resignation letter with me to give to the chair of the department. When I got off the elevator on the eighth floor, Dr. Stanley Milgram, the star professor of the PhD social psychology program, was there waiting in the directorâs office. Somehow he had gotten word that I was coming to see the director with my resignation, and even though he was not a professor of any of my classes, he decided to get involved. Sitting conspiratorially opposite me, he shared that he had also had difficulties with institutions, having been initially rejected from Harvardâs doctoral program. Then he leaned forward and whispered, âI have a secret to
We could have listened to the critiques of the Department of Health respectfully and asked for time to work it out, but the inspection quickly deteriorated into a power struggle between Marty and the surveyors. A week after their visit, we received a long list of deficiencies. We were informed that our clinic would be closed down until they were corrected. Marty was furious. âWho the hell are these civil servants to tell me what to do?â he ranted. He felt that the report was unfair, and that keeping the clinic open might not be worth the hassle.
Not having a doctorâs ego to defend, I wholly disagreed. Close Flushing Womenâs down? Weâd just gotten started! Here was the first real challenge to the survival of this nascent project that I was beginning to call my own. I was already too invested to give up so quickly. The Department of Healthâs survey was simply a report card we had failed. I was a good student; I was determined to get an A.
I read the Department of Healthâs report until I had it memorized, then made an appointment with Dr. Jean Pakter, the head of the Department of Health, to discuss solutions. I wanted to understand exactly how I was expected to correct
the deficiencies. She was responsive to my earnest questions and obvious determination to fully meet the requirements.
During the four months that Flushing Womenâs was closed, Marty was again promoted to the position of medical director of a larger HIP group on Kissena Boulevardâone whose physical space, I pointed out to him, answered the environmental deficiencies in the Department of Health report. Marty would be too busy with his new responsibilities to devote much time to Flushing Womenâs, but I convinced him that under my direction the clinic could rent basement space at this new medical group and work on getting appropriate staffing, beds, and medical equipment to address our programmatic weaknesses. Most importantly, we could reopen.
After moving to Kissena Boulevard and working out a plan of correction, we were once again inspected by the Department of Health. This time, we passed.
Â
I WAS STILL going to school and taking classes between clinic days. I had graduated from Queens College Phi Beta Kappa and entered a graduate program in social psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. In college I had been distanced from my peers by my age and personality; in graduate school I was distanced from the other students due to the fact that my time outside of school was spent operating an abortion clinic. It didnât bother me, though. I wasnât in school to make friends.
I encountered a hurdle early on in the program: I failed a statistics class. I went to the chair of the department requesting permission to retake it later in the curriculum, but he refused to give me any leeway. Not having any real option of another PhD program, and thinking that I was destined to fail, I decided to resign from the doctoral program. With
a great deal of sadness and anxiety I carried my resignation letter with me to give to the chair of the department. When I got off the elevator on the eighth floor, Dr. Stanley Milgram, the star professor of the PhD social psychology program, was there waiting in the directorâs office. Somehow he had gotten word that I was coming to see the director with my resignation, and even though he was not a professor of any of my classes, he decided to get involved. Sitting conspiratorially opposite me, he shared that he had also had difficulties with institutions, having been initially rejected from Harvardâs doctoral program. Then he leaned forward and whispered, âI have a secret to
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