The patients think I am the assistant

Dear Delyara, I am a consultant surgeon. Patients regularly assume the younger white man beside me is the doctor and that I am his assistant. I correct them. He corrects them. The mistake still repeats. Last week, a patient refused to sign consent until “the real surgeon” explained the procedure. I had already explained it twice. The junior doctor repeated my words, and the patient relaxed. Management calls these incidents unconscious bias and recommends resilience training. I have seventeen years of training, publications, and outcomes better than the national average. Still, every room requires me to establish my authority before I can use it. I have begun speaking more sharply than I like because warmth is interpreted as support staff and certainty is called arrogance. Younger women ask how I cope. I tell them to document everything and build strong networks. I do not tell them that some evenings I remove my hospital badge and stare at the title beneath my name, needing printed plastic to remind me that I am not imagining the position I earned.