{"id":461,"date":"2013-04-07T18:18:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T17:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/adc-archimedes\/?p=461"},"modified":"2013-04-14T15:31:38","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T14:31:38","slug":"whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2013\/04\/07\/whats-in-a-name\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s in a name?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Much of the time I&#8217;m called Ian, and at others I&#8217;m called Dr Wacogne. \u00a0I do get called some other things, but I can&#8217;t write them here.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve just greeted a new group of foundation (intern) doctors, and I have, as ever, entirely befuddled on them by emphasising that I am Ian, at all times unless I&#8217;m in front of a patient. \u00a0There is light hearted fun to be had from this &#8211; the refusal to hear them if they address a question to &#8220;Dr Wacogne&#8221;, for example. \u00a0(I call it fun, I guess they probably find it downright irritating.) \u00a0I should emphasise that this is a team rule, not one of my own invention.<\/p>\n<p>They find this very difficult. \u00a0This is most evident when they&#8217;ve come from a particularly rigidly structured area of medicine &#8211; and is also resurgent when they&#8217;re about to return to a similar sort of area.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve asked this group to try and work out why we, as a team, insist on it. \u00a0Of course, if they read about here, then they could win an extra prize. \u00a0These are some of my reasons.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The first and most obvious answer is that we&#8217;re a bunch of fluffy paediatricians, who all hug trees and ride bicycles with signs saying &#8220;my other car is a Prius&#8221;. \u00a0 OK, well, that&#8217;s about 10% of the answer.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px\">The second is a little deeper. \u00a0It&#8217;s to do with what I&#8217;d call asymmetry of address. \u00a0What I mean by this is an environment where one group consistently accords another a higher level of formality of address. \u00a0I was trying to think of a range of examples of this; the trouble is, there aren&#8217;t actually that many. \u00a0I might be hopelessly unworldy, but I can&#8217;t call to mind that many environments where in an exchange, person A would address person B by their given name, while expecting person B to reply using their title and surname. \u00a0I ran through a few examples in my mind, and none of them work that well. <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the relationship between Jeeves and Wooster in\u00a0<a style=\"font-size: 13px\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/P._G._Wodehouse\">PG Wodehouse&#8217;s<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 13px\">\u00a0 stories. \u00a0But this doesn&#8217;t work; Jeeves is his surname, and Wooster is always referred to as &#8220;sir&#8221;. \u00a0They both use a formal form of address. \u00a0(and of course, the actual power lines in this relationship are most of the fun)<\/span><\/li>\n<li>the relationship between Sir Lancelot Spratt and Simon Sparrow in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Doctor_in_the_House\">Doctor in the House<\/a>. \u00a0But that&#8217;s &#8220;Sir Lancelot&#8221; and &#8220;Sparrow&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>The relationship between a judge and a witness. \u00a0But then he or she is &#8220;My Lord&#8221; or &#8220;My Lady&#8221; and you are your title and your surname.<\/li>\n<li>The temptation to discuss one-time &#8220;Sir Alan&#8221; now &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alan_Sugar\">Lord Sugar<\/a>&#8221; is large, but that one is so obviously aimed at demonstration of superiority it&#8217;s almost too easy<\/li>\n<li>The relationship between a teacher and the pupils.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px\">Well, that&#8217;s it, isn&#8217;t it? \u00a0<\/span>And isn&#8217;t that an odd link to make? \u00a0Because how did your teachers make you feel? \u00a0My foundation doctors are in their mid twenties; they&#8217;re adults, who can make decisions, vote, have families and so on. \u00a0And yet we still use the same form of address as a teacher would use to a schoolchild.<\/p>\n<p>The third is deeper still, and goes back to my <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/adc-archimedes\/2013\/03\/24\/learning-how-to-fail-safely\/\">previous post.<\/a>\u00a0 For me it is about ensuring that the environment I&#8217;m working has the combination of a clear\u00a0hierarchy\u00a0 but also a shallow enough <a href=\"http:\/\/psnet.ahrq.gov\/popup_glossary.aspx?name=authoritygradient\">authority gradient<\/a> &#8211; meaning I minimise the effort it takes other people to\u00a0interrupt\u00a0me in the middle of a mistake &#8211; so that I can be kept as safe as possible. \u00a0Certainly air crews have learned this lesson the hard way; the safest crews address now each other by their given names as a matter of policy.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s one last minor reason. \u00a0I&#8217;ve been a doctor for a couple of decades, and I&#8217;ve got a pretty big ego. \u00a0I don&#8217;t need to be reminded of my qualification all of the time; it&#8217;s lodged pretty deep into who I am now&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much of the time I&#8217;m called Ian, and at others I&#8217;m called Dr Wacogne. \u00a0I do get called some other things, but I can&#8217;t write them here. We&#8217;ve just greeted a new group of foundation (intern) doctors, and I have, as ever, entirely befuddled on them by emphasising that I am Ian, at all times [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2013\/04\/07\/whats-in-a-name\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2673,2674],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-error","category-names"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What&#039;s in a name? - ADC Online Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/adc\/2013\/04\/07\/whats-in-a-name\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What&#039;s in a name? - ADC Online Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Much of the time I&#8217;m called Ian, and at others I&#8217;m called Dr Wacogne. \u00a0I do get called some other things, but I can&#8217;t write them here. 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