I am a well educated older woman. I dress nicely and do wear SPANDEX, etc.(LOL). Nobody would confuse with any of the trailer-trash that apears so often on Jerry Springer!!
I speak clearly and I use correct grammar. While I am a Southerner, I have a very slight accent. I do not say, "ya'll" or drop my 'G's. I never say things like "honey child" or "ain't".
At any rate, I was forced by a sudden illness to go to an emergency room at a very nice hospital in Jacksonville, Fl.
The attending physician, a woman from INDIA, who could barely speak English, was slighly rude to me. She was not friendly and never once made eye contact with me.
She then handed me a prescription and further instructions for my care, and asked me very rudely,
"DO YOU KNOW HOW TO READ?".
I told her that my family had been reading and writing English, BEFORE her ancestors ever knew there was such a place as England!
She just stared at me... finally making eye contact. She just continued to explain, in her very poor English, the treatment plan... which I had great difficulty understanding.
Just give me an American Doc... I don't trust INDIANS at all.
Strange, isn't it? Our American schools are so bogged down with med student applications that they only accept the top students from pre-med programs. Yet when you go to a hospital, it seems (depending on where you live) that 30% of the Dr's are foreign. The US schools are preventing US students from becoming Drs, so there's enough room in the system for foreign docs. Makes NO sense. If THAT many foreigners can get jobs as drs, we're not letting enough of our own students get into Med schools.
Must be a recent thing. Thirty years ago, or so, I had a surgery performed by a Pakistani surgeon at our local hospital. My own general practitioner, who had been a first rate surgeon when he was younger, told me he had high confidence in the fellow. The surgeon was excellent, and as I got to know him during my recovery, he turned out to be a charming, well-educated fellow as well. Although he spoke with an accent (rather more Cambridge than anything else), his English was completely fluent and easily understood. He was a fixture in our community for many years until retiring a few years ago.