Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer of England has said that name ”junior doctor’ or ”doctor in training” is confusing. Patients often fail to differentiate junior doctors, who carry out most of the medical work in a hospital and may have been doctors for over 10 years from medical students or even ‘work experience students’. She stated that doctors needed job titles that give them “the respect they deserve”.
The abolition of doctor’s white coats and the trend for younger doctors to introduce themselves simply by their first name adds to the confusion. There have been many moves to democratise hospital care to to equalise the ‘power imbalance’ in the doctor patient relationship but this undoubtedly reduces the respect given to them and anxious patients feel more confident in a show of authority.
It was thought that poor understanding of the role of junior doctors meant less support for them during the junior doctor strike and I remember trying to explain that trainee doctors were fully qualified to a patient who wondered why they got paid at all if they were training.
Dame Sally Davies feels that a name change would help morale but she has also been criticised by doctors and others who feel this is a distraction and there needs to be a change in working conditions so that junior doctors feel valued instead. The Times last week asked readers for suggestions for new names. One reader remembered a poorly skilled surgeon who was referred to as ‘the Hippocratic oaf’ another suggested that since a slang name for doctors is a ‘quack’ junior doctors could be called ‘quacklings’. Perhaps not restoring respect but amusing all the same. It seems that we will probably return to a similar nomenclature as in the past with the terms senior house officer, registrar and senior registrar making their appearance again as they seemed to work in the past and in fact were never totally abandoned.
Names are important. It is why companies spend so much choosing a brand name. Studies have shown that names have an affect of the life chances, jobs and the character of children. A girl named Joy is apparently more likely to be happy and one named Rose more ‘feminine’. Trump was given a ‘head start in business’ by his name. Thinking about doctors in South West London were I work I know of Dr Cream, who used to be a dermatologist, Professor John Studd a gynaecologist, Mr John Dick a urologist who took over from Ms Waterfall [one of the earliest female urologists]. All coincidence?