Hey Doc!

For a number of years I worked in a GP practice a couple of days a week. I initially thought that it was because they thought that I was a brilliant chiropractor and they wanted to send me all of their patients who had spinal issues, but it wasn’t. It was purely a commercial arrangement: they just wanted some rental income. So it goes…

One slightly quiet afternoon, I had popped into the kitchenette to make a cup of tea. On my way back to my treatment room I recognised a lady walking down the corridor, who I knew to be one of the partners of the surgery. As she approached, I waved, smiled, and said: ‘Hi, I’m Andy, the chiropractor who works in the room at the end of the corridor’, and held my hand out to shake hers. She shook my hand, reluctantly, and introduced herself: ‘I’m Dr Jones’. I was taken aback: she had not followed my cue and used her first name. She had crushed me with her use of the title ‘doctor’. I’m sure she was a very good and kind GP, but I instantly hated her, of course, quite unreasonably.

I’ve never introduced myself by anything other than my first name. Most of my patients call me by my first name. My reception team call me by my first name.

• How do you introduce yourself to patients and other health professionals?
• Does using the ‘doctor’ title help or hinder us?
• Can you tell if a patient has a urinary tract infection causing their back pain? (If you can’t, ask yourself whether you should use the ‘Dr’ title at all…… but that’s just my opinion)!
• 10 quotes on being a good doctor here (BMJ 2018).

Photo at top by Online Marketing (via Unsplash)

I am a chiropractor and sonographer. I also mentor colleagues to help them become the clinicians that they want to become. Find out more here.