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Of course we want to avoid confusing the public in healthcare settings! Because more people get sick than get university educated, members of the public are more likely to have met a physician-doctor than a professor-doctor. As a PhD epidemiologist, ‘the population is my patient’. Consequently, when I meet my medical colleagues in the hospital, I do not expect to be addressed as ‘doctor’, nor will I expect to be until such time as the crowding in the corridors becomes so acute that I would have ample statistical power to demonstrate my expertise by assembling the massed throngs of gurneys into long rows of cases and controls, or exposed and unexposed, as required.
We do not restrict titles for power, or status, or to salve our fragile egos. Rather, we want to restrict professional titles to avoid confusing patients, because if there is one thing the typical hospital patient does not want or need, it is more confusion. But what might a class of Grade 5 students taking ‘Intro to Logical Critical Appraisal’ say about how well it’s working?
“Hello Cindy. I am Doctor Blaggs. I am a medical doctor, like your family doctor, except I work in this hospital, treat just one part of the body, and make twice as much money. This is Doctor Bleggs, who is a dentist. Like me, she can prescribe drugs and order a ton of x-rays, but she is supposed to restrict her treatments to your mouth area, although of course I know a thing or two about mouths because as a medical...
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