"I've enjoyed my life. I have no complaints."

Catherine Pierce is 70 years old and recently retired from her OB/GYN practice in New Jersey. She is married with grown stepchildren.

I come from a family of doctors, except my father, who was a lawyer. My brother and I were supposed to be doctors, but instead I was ebellious, and I went away to the University of Vermont and took music as a major. Then the Second World War broke out. 1941. At the end of that first semester, I announced to my family that I wasn't going back to school, that I was going to go in the service. My mother, who was a schoolteacher, looked at me and said, "Just what can you do? You don't have any attributes they want in the service."

So I went back and finished that next semester and came back and said, "Well, now I am going into the service" and again got the same question, "What can you do?" My mother was a very dominant woman and obviously I am, too! I said, "I will go into nursing training." So I did. I went in that July and we were the first big war class at a hospital in New York City. The women going in for an RN ranged from eighteen to in their thirties. When I finished I went into cadet nurse corps and spent my last six months at an Army hospital, expecting to go right into the service--and the war ended. They didn't want us anymore.

I went back to New York City and into my old hospital. I lived with two roommates in New York in a big apartment building where there were a bunch of nurses and medical students. When I decided I had to be a little more serious, I ended up running an OB ward, which I didn't like at all. I liked nursing, so I went back to Columbia Teachers College, thinking I would teach nursing.

But after I went to Columbia I thought, If I'm going to be cleaning up all this stuff and doing all this work I might as well go to medical school. So I switched to Hunter College in premed, and kept working until I started medical school in '51 at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

The last year I was in college I applied to Columbia and another medical school, but I wasn't ready to go yet. To tell you the truth, I really was interested in being a vet, but that didn't work in those days. Females had absolutely no chance, because veterans from the war were all getting around to finishing their schooling, and there were so few veterinary colleges.

By that time I had moved over to Women's Hospital which used to be on the corner of Amsterdam and 110th opposite St. John's Cathedral. It was there I met a doctor--we're still friends--who said, "There's only one place for you to go. That's Women's Medical." I went down and visited there and applied. That was it--no big struggle. At that time there were only 4% women in medicine.

I had spent so many hours working all through college that I thought it was a real luxury just to be able to go to school to study. I didn't tell anybody at medical school that I was a nurse. When I got to my clinical years, it was obvious I knew a lot more than most of the students. People began to pick up that I knew how to handle patients, that I knew the pharmacology. That's when my nursing paid off. We had another nurse in my class, a tall black woman from Ghana who became a cardiologist, and quite famous, too.

The last year I was nursing I was running an obstetrical ward, where I wore myself to a nubbin. Before that I had done surgical nursing. In the service I did some orthopedics, but most of the time I was on neurosurgery in the OR. I hadn't liked obstetrics but once I got in medical school I decided that's what I wanted to do. Maybe I saw so much bad obstetrics on that obstetrical ward. Sometimes I'd say, "Somebody's got to do better than this."

Because I wanted a big institution, I went to Brooklyn, for my internship. I wanted to do everything. I took a big rotating internship, and loved it. When I went to my residency I went back to Women's Hospital. It was a very 'plum' residency.

The full OB/GYN residency was three years, but I spent three and a half. At that time Women's Hospital took one resident every three months, four a year. They had twelve regular residents and a complement staff of four or six extras waiting to get into the program. So I had six months extra there before I actually got into the rotation.

When I was doing premed at Hunter I worked nights at Women's Hospital, from midnight to eight in the morning in the delivery room. That's probably what made me want to go into OB. Those nurses were the ones who were so supportive. They made sure I got off at quarter of eight in the morning so I could get the bus to school on time. I had an apartment, and if they weren't busy and they knew I was sleeping, they would let me sleep and then call me at one o'clock, and send the guard out to watch me walk down. Then if we weren't busy in the delivery room, instead of doing all the little chores, they would say, "You go study."

When I went back as a resident, five years later, they were also very supportive. I had a good relationship with them. Because I had done both things, I knew what they were thinking as well as what I was thinking. I've always been fond of the nurses. When I went to my own hospital, I made a lot of friends with the nurses because I respected what they were doing. They used to imitate me and I used to catch them at it sometimes, but it was in fun.

The residency provided housing. We had room and board at the hospital, but we didn't get paid when we were interns and residents. The highest salary I ever got was $125 a month when I was chief resident. That was about enough to run your car. But our expenses were practically nil. Most of my comrades in arms were men, and most of them had wives who worked. We made very fast, close friendships. I was usually the only woman. We've been a close group, with close friendships for many years. So I enjoyed my internship and residency tremendously. Of course I was a little older, too. When I finished I was thirty-six. When I finished my residency I went back to New Jersey and opened an office and started a practice.

There weren't many women doctors nor were there many residency-trained doctors in New Jersey when I started my practice in January of 1960. I was the oddity, a gal on the block who was in the hospital doing surgery. They'd never had a woman in surgery. I was the first woman on the medical board, the first woman on the Board of Trustees, the first woman doctor to do all these things. Kind of the pathfinder. We had a woman doctor who was a GP and one in anesthesia, but nobody with surgical training.

I was used to medicine, I was well versed in all the ways of doctors and nurses long before I started to practice. When I first was down at the hospital, some of the males would say, "Women don't belong in medicine." I had a pretty thick skin. When I made up my mind, I did it, and nothing ever deterred me. My standard answer was, "Maybe you're right, but here I am." And that was it. What could they say? So I never really had too much of a problem.

The chief of obstetrics sent me his wife and his daughter and patients almost immediately. That opened up the gates. From then I didn't have any more problems. He was an unusual man to do something like that, because he'd look at me and say, "Well, I don't know," especially when I'd refuse to do something that he wanted me to do and I didn't think was right. I did it nicely, though.

Our nurses were good. We had a lot of respect for each other and they didn't usually cross me. They didn't hesitate to call me and tell me if there was a problem, because they knew I would do whatever I could to straighten the problem out. Once nurses got used to the excitement of the delivery room, and they'd been there for a few years, it was boring to go somewhere else. If you're the kind of person who likes the excitement, who likes the unexpected happening, then to be on a floor with postpartum patients who were well, wasn't very exciting. They tended to stay in their own field pretty much. I did not have the nurses call me by my first name when I was in the hospital, nor did I call them by theirs.

The feeling never left me in all those years that it was the patient who was so important, especially in obstetrics, and gyn, too. I was adamant that nobody could put my patient to sleep unless I was standing by her in the OR. The whole hospital knew that. No anesthetist ever put my patient to sleep unless I stood there with her. I was the only person those women knew. I used to have the residents doing the same thing.

I was very close to my patients. I was never their mother, but I was their friend and doctor, and we had a good relationship. In fact I had a card today from a patient who told me she was going to have her sixth section in February. And I thought way back to when I almost did a hysterectomy on her after her second one. I liked my patients. I didn't spoil them. I was stern with them, but they knew I was always there when they needed me.

One patient I started taking care of when I was a second year resident was still my patient the day I quit. She brought me a little gold charm which said "1st Lady" on it. I think I operated on her five times. She was trying to get pregnant. She never did but she stayed with me all those years, through two marriages, and from New York to New Jersey, too. I had some patients for thirty years.

Because I was a nurse first, I had a different viewpoint of medicine. I knew a lot of the misery people just out of college going to medical school didn't know. And maybe never do know. Doing my nursing, I worked with many clinic patients in New York City. Maybe that gave me more sympathy with people as patients. That was the art instead of the science. Sometimes I think the art of medicine has departed a little bit.

We taught medical students, but teaching the residents was what I really enjoyed. I used to give my residents a push about the art of medicine. I had one resident who was academically super, but his bedside manner and his relationship with the patient as a person was poor. One day I said, "You know, if you're going to practice medicine you have to have compassion, to treat the patient as a person first." He didn't say anything, but later he wrote me this note saying, "You taught me compassion." Something like that makes it all worthwhile, getting that across.

I did high-risk obstetrics. I was one of the few people around who did. Remember, I was one of the few residency-trained people, so I was getting all the rough cases. We had a full residency staff. When you have twelve residents if you don't keep up, you're not going to be teaching. Even after I stopped active practice I still taught.

I was beginning to get a burnout. I liked my patients, I liked what I did, but I didn't like the new attitude: Whatever you do, you're going to be wrong if it doesn't turn out perfect. It's difficult to practice OB that way. You do your best but unfortunately we're not God. No matter how hard we try there are going to be times when we cannot predict what's going to happen. That was difficult.

I just got a letter from the president of the hospital who said, "I think it was a good time for you to leave because you had the best." And I think that's true. It's not as much fun anymore. You can be dead tired and stay up thirty-six, forty-eight hours, as long as you're doing something worthwhile. But when you're beating your head against the wall, then it's a waste of time.

Women OB/GYNs still have a little more caring. We had six women on the staff when I left, and a number of women residents through the years. So many of the women had babies while they were residents, and there's nothing like doing it yourself. We used to say amongst ourselves that in OB/GYN the men either liked women and were empathetic, or hated them. I think this was true. I used to go to meetings when I was the only woman and I'd think, Which of these men would I go to? That's how I judged them sometimes, but that's a personal bias.

Things have changed a lot. We have nurse practitioners now and nurses doing many things that twenty-five years ago they wouldn't dare to do. We have lost a little of the respect between people in the profession and with the patients. That upsets me.

When I was in nursing we were given a tremendous amount of responsibility. If you didn't work out, they let you go, period. The nurses began to lose it somewhere along the line. I kept watching this all through the years from the two points of view because I had so many friends among the nurses. Some of them are very good--the ones who become the high risk special care nurses. Some of the others have gotten away from nursing. The essence of nursing is the care of the patient, and now they are forced to spend most of their time with charts and papers and telephones, which secretaries can do.

If I were in the same situation, I'd do it again. I've enjoyed my life. I have no complaints. But if it were today? I doubt it. I don't think I like medicine now. Back in the 50's and 60's, we had ladies and gentlemen practicing medicine. We don't necessarily have that today.

Residency now is more demanding in the sense that there's more knowledge. Obstetrics opened up so much the minute we invaded the uterus. The residents work a little less. I worked every other night and every other weekend. Our residents were working every third night, every third weekend, so they had more time off than I ever had. I used to look at them and say, "Stop complaining. What are you complaining about?" However, we all needed more time off than we ever got, but that wasn't why we were there. We were there to learn. And of course that changed, too. Not that they weren't there to learn but they also wanted to be paid, which is something we never even thought about.

When you're married, running a family life depends on ancillary help, as I'm sure every woman doctor would say, especially when you're an obstetrician. So I was very fortunate. I didn't marry until 1962 and I had a full-time housekeeper with me from about early 1961 on, who made it her job to take care of me. She was a perfectly wonderful woman who came, helped me out for a week when my father was ill, and stayed for eighteen years. She took care of my husband and the kids and the dogs and everything else.

My husband had five children. Actually three of them lived with us, and then I had a foster daughter who we took when she was ten, who is now forty. Plus our house was home for a bunch of kids. My husband would bring kids home. Fortunately the housekeeper never minded how many we were. I never knew for sure, either.

My husband ran the household. He still does. He's the one who made the menus out, who conferred with the housekeeper about the food, who did the shopping. Always. He's a gourmet cook. I couldn't compete with that. He's a sculptor and he ran his own art school, so he taught daily, and sometimes two nights a week and Saturday mornings. It was a busy household, but we worked it out well. It was a happy household.

We had two completely separate lives, and our life together. Actually we've had to learn to live together since we've been retired. We never saw that much of each other, but we spent some time together and we had great vacations. I took a vacation every three months, my whole practice. We made a pact.

When we were married my husband said, "I know what you're going to do. I know you're going to leave in the middle of things. I know we have to take two cars." He fitted into my life. We took two cars, or made sure somebody could pick him up. I always had a beeper with me at home. We knew we might have to leave in the middle of the play or the opera. And all those years he never complained, until 1989, when he said, "It's enough." So I gave up OB.

Thinking back on some of my colleagues, not so much in the OB/GYN field but medical and so forth, they were afraid of death, themselves, and afraid to handle it. They weren't so much trying to keep the patient alive for the patient's sake or the family's sake, as they were for their own. When I saw this happen I would say to them, "What are you doing all this for? The patient's going to die. Why don't you let the patient die with dignity? What's so bad about dying?"

When Elizabeth Kubler-Ross started talking about these issues, maybe that was the beginning of a change. People began to accept death with some grace. I was at a Catholic hospital. I was not Roman Catholic, but I remember one of the nuns talking to me about death when I first started there. She said, "But this is God's grace." And I never forgot that.