Luckily I´m trained for this

(courtesy www.toothpastefordinner.com)

There´s a cultural norm here that one must be introduced to new people by someone they know who is of equal or higher status than themselves. So I can´t go up to a doctor in the hospital, explain who I am, and start working with them. Instead, the director of the hospital or chief of the department has to officially present me to the doctor, after which all is well and good.

This usually goes fine after the preliminary awkwardness of the formality. Unfortunately on Saturday the peds floor team had just rotated, and none of the doctors I was familiar with were working. I knew the interns and the nurses at least recognized me so I thought it would be no big deal. Wow, so wrong. Since the interns are of "lower" status than the doctors they were powerless to effect a magical introduction for me. And the nurses, having never formally met me, were not open to helping either.

So I show up in the ward and literally everyone ignored me, actively, for over an hour. I made optimistic eye contact with the nurses, they looked right past me. The interns said hi but pretended not to know me as soon as the doctor came around. The doctors absolutely looked right through me, despite the fact that the patients were running up to me for hugs and I clearly knew all of them as well as the interns.

Apparently it´s a tremendous faux pas to introduce yourself to someone and from my friends's experiences it just results in being ignored in a more hostile fashion. So after an hour or so I went home.

Cross-cultural understanding in action!