What should residents call me

The hidden curriculum — lessons trainees learn by watching how educators act — can have powerful positive effects. She was 23 and the mother of a two-year-old daughter. The first-year resident assigned to the case had that special quality I knew would make her a fine physician. She reported that Sally would not answer any of her questions and instead just stared ahead.

I entered the room wearing my white coat and introduced myself as Dr. I sat next to Sally and gently touched her shoulder. I said she looked tired and asked if she was having trouble sleeping. A door opened a crack — she looked at me and said yes. It was the first time she spoke. I asked why, but got no response. Then some instinct in me led to another question: I asked if the voices were keeping her awake, and she said yes.

That conversation allowed us to diagnose and treat her for schizophrenia, and she responded well. What made her open up? I even prefer that friends who see me professionally call me "Doctor. This tells me they want me as their friend at certain times and their physician at others.

Knowing these roles allows for the magic that is the doctor-patient relationship. It allows me to assess their health objectively and tell them honestly what they need to know about it. It also allows them to open up. Patients tell their physician things they would never tell a friend, and these details can be critical in diagnosis and treatment. For me, though, the word is not at all about staking a claim on status. I joined the swing dance club, and met a few guys.

And at one point, when socializing with the guys outside of dance class, one of them asked me what my research was on. So I gave him the thumbnail sketch of my research. Now, to be clear, an honors senior thesis, while nothing like what a graduate student would do, was still fairly in-depth.

I had to translate primary sources from the original late-Classical Latin. And he was right. And there was so much secondary material, often contradictory, that I had been carefully sorting through. But I was able to sift it into a three-sentence summary of my senior thesis work, you know, as one does.

So I gave him that summary, and then asked—since he was also an undergraduate senior doing an honors thesis—what his research was on.

Reader, I went home in a frothing rage. I worried that another student might overhear me and think that I considered myself special, somehow exempt from the expectations of my rank. Most students I work with ignore my request, like I did when I was in training, and continue to call me Dr. She treated me like a junior colleague, welcoming me into the field of medicine. She set a tone of professionalism and mutual respect I now try to replicate. But I do, because I want my workplace to reflect a sense of teamwork and collegiality.

She set a tone of professionalism and mutual respect I now try to replicate with my own students. Yet when I worked as a trainee with Elaine, I never once forgot that she was the boss. Her request that I call her by her first name only made her appear more confident.

I never confused the collaborative workplace tone she set with my own level of medical knowledge: I had a lot to learn, and Elaine was going to teach me. I worry more that the tradition of using titles only for some in our ranks perpetuates an environment that too often belittles trainees. Medical education can be infantilizing, and faculty can forget that most students are highly motivated adults who want to become excellent doctors.

Many colleagues from a variety of institutions tell me they fear that if students call them by their first names, the classroom and clinic will become too casual, and students will try to weasel their way out of the hard work of becoming a doctor.