Grab Your Ultrasound Tech

“This guy grabbed my butt! I couldn’t believe it!” Marian exclaimed, as she stood waiting to show me an ultrasound on a man around sixty, with a clotted vein in his leg.

I started looking at the images, but then what she had said finally soaked in, “What do you mean, like really intentionally grabbed you?”

“Yeah, very intentional,” she said with a hint of hurtfulness in her voice. I tried to look her in the eyes, but she was hanging her head too low, staring at her feet.

All at once she raised her head and said, “You know Denise mentioned something to me about a patient grabbing her a few days ago. I wonder if it was the same guy?”

So we called Denise, who was over at the clinic that day. Sure enough, it was the same guy. Denise didn’t seem as bothered by it, having mentioned it more as a “guess what happened to me today.”

I decided not to speak with the patient yet; not until the ultrasound supervisor got back with me about protocol. And not until she could be present at the same time. A transporter… a MALE transporter… took the patient back to his room.

This was something new in my experience. So I asked Marian, “Has this sort of thing happened before?”

Marian was hunched over looking at her feet again, but straightened up a bit as she responded, “Not this blatant. Often a man, occasionally a woman, touches one of us, but it is usually an accident or at least made to seem like an accident, so we don’t report it. This is the first time it has happened to me … at least so aggressively. He actually squeezed my left cheek then patted it… like we were close… intimate…” Marian sighed. “Maybe he’s demented and thought I was his wife?”

“Maybe.”

“More often we get flashed!” Marian said with a little sparkle in her eye, since this was good gossip material and it obviously didn’t make her uncomfortable… flashing wasn’t such a direct attack on her, and, of course, in the hospital, you see so much exposed skin that a flasher doesn’t have a chance of shocking anyone. Usually… “Do you remember that woman a few years ago... couldn’t keep her clothes on?”

“Yes, not easy to forget.” How could I forget?


A few years back, Marian had come out from scanning this woman’s abdomen with a question about one of the kidneys; I needed to scan her myself. On the way into the room Marian had stopped to warn me not to be surprised if the patient was exposed.

“I’ve tried to keep her covered, but she keeps taking off the sheet.”

Of course at the time I was thinking about the patient’s kidney. I didn’t really think much of it until I walked in the room and there lying on the table was a thirty-five year old, tall, voluptuous, totally naked, could’ve-been-a-movie star… porn movie star.

My usual calm, professional (I like to think even suave?) demeanor was severely tested. Marian quickly tried to pull the sheet back up but the patient waved her off saying casually, “I can’t stand to be covered with that. I’m fine.” Then she grabbed under her breast with one hand and winked at me. I had to look around the room and make sure there weren’t any cameras, thinking this might be some sort of Playboy candid camera stunt.

Now I assure you, I was not in the least excited. I did not take any longer than needed to decide the kidney was normal, which it was, of course. Marian chaperoned, much more for my sake than any concern she had for the patient. She probably was concerned about my health; like I might have a heart attack. Or maybe she was afraid this patient was a seductress, after the doctor for his money. For whatever reasons, I was glad Marian was there. When I left the room, I must admit I had a lot of difficulty holding back a smile; a problem that lasted the rest of the day.


“Doctor? Kriegs?” Marian poked my shoulder.

“I must have spaced out for a moment.”

“Yeah, right! Look at that grin! I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

Had I been smiling? “Sorry,” I said, forcing myself to be serious again.

Marian, though, was already thinking about what had just happened again. “You know what bothers me even more? When I was scanning him… even before he grabbed me, he… he was getting excited… I think. When I had the probe on the groin, looking at the common femoral vein, I’m pretty sure he started to get an erection.”

Marian looked at me with sad eyes. “Maybe he thought I was coming on to him?”

There was going to be no ‘benefit of the doubt’ for this guy, at least from me. “Now don’t make this into something it isn’t or fabricate some easy way out for him. Remember, you weren’t the first. It also happened with Denise. He is going to get an official reprimand, if nothing else.”

As she walked away, I remembered in medical school, one of my male classmates came out from a physical exam on a woman and was a bit unnerved, to say the least. Apparently when he was checking pulses in the groins, the woman, who was old enough to be his grandmother, became very sexually aroused. This young doctor-to-be was too upset to go into details, probably more shocked by the age of the patient than the reaction she had. My own experience checking pulses has elicited mostly laughter, since it often is a very ticklish spot. Of course they say tickling is a form of sexual arousal for some people.

It didn’t take long for the supervisor to get back to me. Our policy was not specific to this type of behavior, but it was clear what we had to do. The two of us went to the offending patient's room and confronted him directly about his behavior, making it crystal clear if he ever did it again he could not be a patient here. Also, he was never to be alone with a female worker, EVER!

I was expecting a denial, but he simply looked down at the floor, afraid to make eye contact, nodding his head. When we had finished he looked up and asked, “Does my wife need to know about this?”

It turned out his wife worked at the clinic. Now there was some motivation to keep his hands to himself.

“Unfortunately,” the supervisor informed him, “she already knows.”