Case Files is a popular review series for third year clerkships. The chapters in the books are numbered by case and not titled, so you must read the opening case presentation and formulate a diagnosis before reading the chapter and learning more in-depth about the central topic. Generally, Case Files is awesome for studying on the wards, when you might have five or ten minutes available every so often to squeeze in a little review. However, I was irritated by the last case I read in Psychiatry. The case is (spoiler alert!) Gender Identity Disorder, an issue all of itself, and it opens, "A 26-year-old chromosomal male dressed as a woman comes to see a psychiatrist as part of the workup required before he is allowed to have the sex change operation he desires." Really? Did the author honestly use the word "he" twice in the opening sentence? The entire case is written using male pronouns. Just to be clear, it later includes the sentence "He considers himself a 'straight woman' and has never seen himself as a gay man."
If they ever allow me to be an real doctor, I hope I have the basic decency to refer to my patients using pronouns consistent with their expressed wishes. I wonder how pervasive the use of inappropriate pronouns is in medical records? I have not yet had a transgendered patient that I was aware of, so I have not experienced this first hand.
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