Wearing a Hijab in the OR with Deena Kishawi, MD

Physician's Guide to Doctoring with Bradley B. Block, MD

Deena Kishawi, MD, is a Chicago-based OBGyn resident physician who is particularly interested in health outcomes that are unique to Middle Easterners and North Africans residing in the United States. With her fluency in the Arabic language, her research with Muslim patients in healthcare, and her work with immigrant, refugee, and first-generation communities in Chicago, she is currently conducting research on these populations and is working towards training and educating healthcare providers about the unique challenges these population face. Dr. Kishawi is Muslim and wears a hijab and keeps her arms covered, so her first experience in the operating room as a medical student was challenging and led to start the blog HijabInTheOR.com. Her aim is to make the OR a safe and respectful place for hijab wearing healthcare providers. We discuss what her experience has been like treating patients wearing a hijab, both the good and the bad. We also discuss some of the basic tenants of Islam with which we should be familiar to best help our patients and our trainees and some issues in our healthcare system that can undermine Muslim patients and potentially impact their care.