The Doctor is Out

I am not a doctor. I am not a therapist. I look like neither a doctor nor a therapist. In fact, many assume that I am an undergraduate, or perhaps even in high school.

And yet, in my first six weeks at Club UGL I have had many people approach me at the Information Desk asking me to diagnose, explain, or cure their medical and emotional problems. Perhaps this is because, behind the desk, I am more or less a captive audience. One woman thought she saw a ghost at the foot of her bed the previous night, and she wanted me to tell her if I thought paranormal phenomena exist or if I thought she was crazy. Returning students frequently talk through the fears about going back to school. I've had people ask me for advise on their relationships. For most of these situations all I can do is smile, nod, and assure people that I am neither a doctor nor a therapist. I can lead people to information, but I cannot (and should not) interpret it for them.

In my very first week on the job, a woman came to the information desk and showed me what appeared to be a report from her OB/GYN. She stabbed her finger at a sentence strewn with medical terms and said something along the lines of "I really need to know what this means. Do you have a medical dictionary? I looked these words up at home on the Internet and they talk about being pregnant." I walked with her to the reference section and pulled out a few medical dictionaries for her to sit down and look at.

15 minutes later she came back to the reference desk, panicked and with dictionary in hand. "Can you help me understand this? They say I'm pregnant. I can't be pregnant, I just can't!" I read the definitions of the two words in the offending sentence that were making the woman panic. If memory serves me the terms were were "gravida" and "para," meaning the number of times a woman has been pregnant and the number of times she has given birth. The number "3" was attached to these terms. I assumed this meant that she had been pregnant and had given birth 3 times (which she said she had), but was not currently pregnant.

I don't like seeing people upset. I wanted to soothe her nerves, to tell her not to worry. But I am not a doctor. I could have been wrong. I hate to leave reference questions unanswered, but it is far worse to misinform your patrons. I quickly considered all of this and decided that all I could do was read the definitions to her and suggest she call her doctor. I think she felt a little less panicked after I read the definitions to her again, but I'm sure she was still quite nervous when she left the library.

I was a bit baffled by this situation at first. Why would someone ask me to explain a report from her OB/GYN? Why would someone ask me if she is pregnant? I have neither a medical degree nor x-ray vision. The more I thought about the situation, though, the happier I became. This woman had what she considered an information emergency and she came to the library. While she started her search on the Internet, she came to the library before she called her doctor, whose number was printed at the top of the report. Perhaps she felt like the Internet could not adequately or reliably answer her questions. Perhaps she was simply looking for personal interaction or someone to listen to her fears. Whatever the case, she, and the others who mistake the Info Desk for a medical and counceling help desk, must feel comfortable enough with the library and confident enough in our services to bring their problems to us. We may not be able to help them, but we can listen.

That has to speak well of libraries, right?