El paciente respira despacio mientras la médica toma notas.

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Breakdown of El paciente respira despacio mientras la médica toma notas.

• .: period (punctuation mark)
• mientras: while
• despacio: slowly

Questions & Answers about El paciente respira despacio mientras la médica toma notas.

Why is it “El paciente” but “la médica”? Shouldn’t the genders match?

The genders refer to the people, not to their roles in relation to each other.

• El paciente = the (male) patient
  
  • paciente is a common-gender noun: it can be el paciente (male) or la paciente (female).
• la médica = the (female) doctor
  
  • médico/médica changes form depending on the doctor’s gender:
    
    • el médico = the male doctor
    • la médica = the female doctor

So the sentence is describing a male patient and a female doctor. If it were a female patient and a male doctor, you’d say:

• La paciente respira despacio mientras el médico toma notas.

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Could it also be “La médico” instead of “la médica”? I thought many professions stay in the masculine.

You might hear “la médico”, but in modern, especially Peninsular (Spain) Spanish, “la médica” is very common and generally preferred for a female doctor.

Patterns:

• Many jobs now have feminine forms when referring to women:
  
  • el abogado → la abogada
  • el ingeniero → la ingeniera
  • el médico → la médica

Using la médico is understood, but increasingly sounds old-fashioned or less in line with current usage about gender. In Spain today, la médica is standard when you explicitly mean a woman doctor.

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Why is it “respira despacio” and not something like ? Are both correct?