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Thanks to The Times Magazine for permission to reproduce this article and photo of an all female team. |
Abigail Radnor
November 13 2010 3:35pm
Meet the country's only all-female plastic surgery team
Theatre 4 at the London Clinic looks like any other operating theatre being
prepped for a plastic surgery procedure. Everyone is wearing scrubs. The
nursing team has prepared the surgical instruments. The surgeon approaches
the table, the runner adjusts the lighting and the operation begins. But
there is one crucial difference to this scene. Everyone in the room, from
surgeon to nurse to runner, is a woman.
Consultant Dalia Nield's all-female plastic surgery team, the only one of its
kind in the UK, evolved after demand from her patients. "Some of them
started to ask, 'Is your anaesthetist a man? I don't want him to see my
breasts. Do you have an anaesthetist who's a woman?' So I thought this was
something that needed doing."
Nield, 61, specialises in reconstructive surgery (carried out after a
mastectomy or the removal of skin cancers) as well as purely cosmetic
procedures. Most of the latter work is liposculpture, using liposuction to
change women's body shapes.
The increasing mix of patients from different social and religious backgrounds
prompted Nield to form the team about five years ago. Muslim women, for
example, did not want intimate areas of their bodies to be seen by a man.
Other female patients were simply shy. As Deidre Guerin, one of the team's
anaesthetists, puts it, "It is a question of trust and it is a
question of privacy."
Many of Nield's patients tell her they come to her because she is a woman - a
rarity, as only 9.5 per cent of consultants belonging to BAPRAS (the British
Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons) are female.
"I think they feel I'm more sympathetic, probably because I am vainer than
male surgeons." But she dislikes generalising - some male surgeons are very
sensitive, some female ones have awful bedside manners. "Either you're good
or you're not," she argues.
The way Nield refers to male colleagues as "the boys" in her muted Venezuelan
accent is certainly more maternal than condescending. "The best thing about
being a consultant is that the operating table is set at my height now," she
jokes. "The boys who trained me were all so tall, I had to climb ladders to
reach it."
While almost 90 per cent of plastic surgery patients are female, it is not
only women who feel more at ease with Nield. She also carries out
gynecomastic ("moob") work in men. "They tell me they feel comfortable
because they don't have to compete with me. They're not challenged by me as
a woman."
Nield clearly loves her work. "It's such a beautiful specialism, because you
do so much. You can change things, you can fill holes left by cancer or by
accidents." She thinks more women should become plastic surgeons and that
it's natural for them to be attracted to such a discipline. "Because I am a
woman, I feel that I'm quite sensitive to beautiful things."
While more women are now becoming plastic surgeons (23.5 per cent of BAPRAS
trainees are female), it is still a very male-dominated industry. Nield, a
mother of two grown-up daughters, says it is a tough gig for a woman. The
working hours have become more flexible since she was a trainee, but the
problems have not disappeared. "If you want to get married and have a family
and do this, you need a good chair and a wonderful husband," she says,
before adding glowingly, "I have both."
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