fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2866 ]

[ SECRET POST #2866 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2866 ⌋

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[Person of Interest]

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07. http://i.imgur.com/fq1S7if.png
[Strictly Come Dancing, linked for nudity]

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08. [ SPOILERS for Bleak Expectations]

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09. [ SPOILERS for Watchmen ]

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10. [ SPOILERS for Transformers: More than Meets the Eye ]

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11. [ WARNING for child sexual abuse ]

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12. [ WARNING for rape, gore, etc]

[American Horror Story: Freakshow]

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I know this is a really weird thing to post about but I'm curious to see what you guys think.

I work at a doctor's office, and although it doesn't happen *that* often, sometimes patients will just take it upon themselves to call him by his first name instead of Dr. Smith (not his real name, obviously). I understand why in some instances (he knows a ton of people, and sometimes a patient will be referred by one of his friends or relatives and that person refers to him by his first name, so the patient does, too) but in others it just comes out of nowhere, and it bothers me because it seems disrespectful.

I don't know if I'm just being weird and too "proper" or something, but it wouldn't occur to me to just start calling my doctor by his first name without him telling me to (and even then I probably wouldn't feel comfortable with it).

Do a lot of people do this?

I would never in a million years do it. It just seems so... improper. there are forms of respect and propriety and some cases in which one just ought to follow them. And, I mean, IMO a doctor is not someone you really have a super personal relationship with usually? IDK. I am OK with some formality with doctors.

That's exactly it. It just seems improper. Like I said in various places below, for the people who have personal relationships with him as well as professional ones, I get them using his first name. But for people who don't, it seems disrespectful. In some situations you should be formal, IMO, and this is one of them.

If i know someone well enough to know their first name, and use it in a non-professional setting, i'll use it if i see them. But just my random GP or whatever, i wouldn't. But that's mostly just because i was taught that 'adults'/people in authority are not called by their first name.

But i also have a different view of doctors, since i grew up around them and know a lot of them can be hacks, assholes, and worthless jerks, so they get respect only when they earn it.

In a non-professional or social setting I don't think there's anything wrong with using a first name. In the situation I'm talking about with my boss, he has friends/people he knows on a social level who see him as patients and they call him by his first name, which I totally get. It would probably be weirder for them to start calling him Dr. Last Name. But people who are ONLY patients, who he has no relationship without outside of that, calling him by his first name seems strange/not proper to me.

I totally get your second point, too. My mom's worked in the medical field since I was a kid, and we frequently had doctors around growing up. And yeah, plenty of them were dicks, just like anyone else. There were a few my mom worked with and would spend time with socially, and my brother and I called them by their first names because we knew them pretty well and were around them on a social level (the ones we didn't know socially, though, like my mom's bosses, we always called Dr. Last Name).

But like I said above, for my boss where some of the people who call him by his first name ONLY interact with him on a professional level it seems weird. I've worked for asshole doctors before, but this one is genuinely a great guy and a great doctor and deserves respect. His patients love him, although maybe that's why some of them call him by his first name...it's obvious he really cares about them and maybe they think he's their friend or something.

Oh for fuck's sake

Being a doctor doesn't make him better than other people. He is not owed deference because of his education. Nobody is.

IDK, to me it's not about deference, just propriety. I don't see them as being better than me - I would honestly feel just as weird about my doctor calling me by my first name as I would about calling my doctor by his or her first name.

What would you rather them call you than your first name? Mr./Ms. Last Name?

Yes exactly.

Re: Calling doctors by their first names

(Anonymous) - 2014-11-08 03:43 (UTC) - Expand

No one is saying it makes them better, but there are certain professions where I feel like using first names just isn't appropriate. Should students call teachers by their first names too? In some situations you need to be a bit more formal, IMO.

I get not calling doctors Dr. Whoever in a social setting, and I'm not insisting people use the title at all times. But if you're their patient, and you call their office to make an appointment, saying "I need to make an appointment with Bob" instead of "I need to make an appointment with Dr. Jones" (or hell, just "I need to make an appointment" if you have an issue with using titles) just seems inappropriate.

Should students call teachers by their first names too?

...this is a little telling.

Dude, in most situations the "student" is a kid. A teenager at the oldest. I don't think adults have to treat a doctor like The Adult.

In a college setting it'd be a bit weird for students to call the Professor Chad or whatever. But--that's just custom. I wouldn't consider it "inappropriate" if they were doing it politely, just weird. The best professor I ever had in undergrad insisted on being called just "Mr. _____," thinking "Dr" sounded like too much. He did have a phD, he just didn't flaunt it.

saying "I need to make an appointment with Bob" instead of "I need to make an appointment with Dr. Jones" (or hell, just "I need to make an appointment" if you have an issue with using titles) just seems inappropriate.

It is a bit, but only because there could be more than one Bob. "I need to make an appointment with Bob Jones" is perfectly appropriate.

Granted if Dr. Jones (or Prof. Jones) prefers to be called Dr or Prof, it's polite to call them that. We should call people what they want to be called. But again, that's BEING POLITE, not deference.

Re: Calling doctors by their first names

(Anonymous) - 2014-11-09 00:49 (UTC) - Expand

I was taught that if I couldn't pronounce someone's last name or if they were friends of the family then I could call them Mr./Ms./Mrs./Dr./Whatever-their-title-is First Name. Obviously, this only applied to people who were older than myself.

Hmmm, interesting. Would you call someone Mrs. Mary for example? I grew up with kids whose parents sort of did that, but it was always either Mr. or Miss First Name. The "rule" was if you were going to use first names, it was always Miss for women, regardless of whether or not they were married. Mrs. only "applied" to the last name, so if you wanted to call her Mrs., it had to be Mrs. Last Name. The one lady who didn't follow the rule insisted her kids call my mom Mrs. First Name, and because my mom's first name can also be a last name (but obviously isn't HER last name) it always sounded wrong to me.

My brother and I always called adults by their first names, though, unless they had a specific title. If they could call us by our first names, we could call them by their first names. My parents weren't the type of people who thought adults automatically deserved respect from kids just because they were older, and we didn't have any of that "respect your elders" stuff if they didn't do anything to actually earn respect.

I think doctors are different, though...if they can spend a decade in school/internships then they deserve the respect of the title, but just being an adult doesn't mean you automatically deserve one.

And wow, that got way off topic, but it's interesting how differently people are raised when it comes to this kind of thing.

Now that you mention it, I think it was Ms. First Name, not because of any hard rule, but because it just sounds more natural. Dang. Now I'm going over it in head, wondering if I've called someone Mrs. or Ms. First Name.

Lol, it's funny. It wasn't a question of whether or not an adult deserved respect, it was a question of me being polite.

Re: Calling doctors by their first names

(Anonymous) - 2014-11-08 05:09 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Calling doctors by their first names

iceyred - 2014-11-08 05:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Calling doctors by their first names

(Anonymous) - 2014-11-08 06:04 (UTC) - Expand

I would never call a doctor by her first name, but just to play devil's advocate, when the nurse calls patients back at every single doctor's office I've ever been to, it's always by first name. Maybe with a last named added if nobody immediately responds. I kinda find that a little insulting too.

I kinda find that a little insulting too.

That's interesting. Would you rather they use Ms./Mrs./Mr. Last Name instead? There's someone above that said that.

Honestly, to me it seems weird that they'd call you something other than your first name. The doctor calls you by your first name, you call them Dr. Whoever. That's just how it works, or at least that's how I was raised. And I think most people here feel the same way...obviously there are *some* who don't feel that way since they don't see anything wrong with calling the doctor by his first name, but it seems most do. That's how it seems to work on the doctor shows I've watched, too. (Not that TV is necessarily representative of reality, but the writers had to have gotten the idea that that's how it's done from somewhere.)

It's really interesting to me to see the different responses here.

*nods*

It is interesting. :)

Well, to me, whatever mechanism is in place to make the doctor feel insulted if I call him by his first name is also in place when he talks to me. I'm an adult. I've got a Ph.D. Why should he call me Lorraine, and I not call him John? (which I should stress that I do call my doctor Dr. Lastname except for our pediatrician who encourages everyone to call him Dr. Firstname; in fact the name of his practice is Dr. Firstname's Kids) I also think it's super weird to see nurses in their twenties calling sixty year old women by their first names. I fully acknowledge this may be a Southern thing, but it seems super patronizing to me.

Re: Calling doctors by their first names

(Anonymous) - 2014-11-08 05:03 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Calling doctors by their first names

lunabee34 - 2014-11-08 16:44 (UTC) - Expand

Honestly, to me it seems weird that they'd call you something other than your first name.

I would find it incredibly patronizing to be called by my first name by my doctor and her staff. Where I'm from, only kids are called by their first name, adults by Mr./Mrs./Ms. LastName. It's a sign of respect - sure, I go to the doctor because I need her expertise (note: if it's about that, then there would be no reason for her *staff* to call me by my first name, as it's not their expertise I need), but just because the I came to the doctor for help doesn't mean they can talk down to me.

I call people by what they introduce themselves to me as. In a professional situation, that usually means "Mr. Lastname". In a social situation, that usually means "Firstname". Basically, I assume that people will tell me the name they're most comfortable with me using, and I try to respect that comfort level.

In the case of one classmate, this involves me *still* calling him by his proper, ethnic first name, as he was introduced to me in kindergarten. He switched to using an Anglicized name around the fourth grade due to how similar his name was to an English girl's name. I still use his proper name because *he* never told me I could call him by his nickname. I don't really talk to him, he's not exactly a friend, but I interacted with him enough in high school that it was somewhat noticeable, but I was never corrected and so continue in my use.

It does make it hard when the relationship stops being professional and becomes social. My sister has been married to the son of one of the teachers at my junior high for three years, but I still can't get out of the habit of calling her father-in-law "Mr. Lastname". It's really obvious because I only ever met his wife in social situations when we were already looking at being family in the future, so I call her "Firstname". The only exception is when I talk about the two of them together, since I think of them at that time as "Firstname and Firstname".

Mostly I avoid this by rarely using titles in conversation. I'm far more likely to say something like, "Hi! How are you?" than, "Mr. Lastname! How are you?".

That's what I do, too, and what I think makes the most sense.

With my boss, when he comes out to get a new patient on the first visit he always says "Hi, I'm Dr. Last Name" so for some people to just decide they're going to call him First Name when he's specifically introduced himself a different way seems kind of obnoxious.

Also, I think it depends on the situation. There's a guy who's friends with my boss but also interacts with him a fair bit on a professional level. On a social level, he calls him First Name, but when in a professional setting, he calls him Dr. Last Name.

And there are other doctors we work with frequently...when discussing them with my boss privately I might refer to them as Bill, Jim or Jack because I know them, but when I'm speaking in front of patients or talking directly to patients I'll call them Dr. Jackson, Dr. White or Dr. Anderson (totally making up these names here). It all depends on the context for me.

But as I'm learning from this thread, obviously people see this type of thing differently.

Woah, and in these kinds of instances I realize how different my society is than yours. We call our Prime Minister by her first name, only people we use a title for is our royal family.

I call my doctor, my professors and anyone else by their first names and so does everyone else. Last names might be used, but not to the person, but talking about him or her but that is more to avoid confusion (I use my doctors full name when I call to the office to get an appointment). Or sometimes it can be used as an insult, Doctor so and so who things she is better than everyone, or (Prime) Minister so and so who sukcs.

And no it doesn't matter how old you are or what your social position is, neither do we use Mr. or Mrs./Miss., except sometimes for young kids as a way of getting their attention "Miss Jane Doe could you please pay attention" or "Young Mister John Doe what are you doing?".

I'm late, but that's really interesting!

People here are disagreeing with me about doctors (and professors, I guess), but I can't imagine they would think it's appropriate to call the President by his first name (although maybe they would, who knows).

In my case I do think a large part of it is probably the specific region I'm in...it's crazy how different the culture can be in different places!

My entire society is built on the fact that everyone is equal,* that no one is better than anyone else, and as such The Prime Minister does not get treated differently than anyone else. Our politicians and rich people, even our Royal Family all give the outside appearance that they want to live like "everyone" else. And as such, first names are used. It isn't a hard and fast rule, our former Prime Minister goes by Stoltenberg in conversations about him, but in interviews and stuff they adress him as Jens, and introduce him as Former Prime Minister (or current whatever the heck is NATO or whatever position is) Jens Stoltenberg. Just like our Prime Minister, they ask her "Erna what are your views on political thingy" and so on.

It isn't that different in Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland either, but most of those countries have a history of Nobility, we don't, except the ones we got when we were under Danish or Swedish rule.

*Not saying other societies aren't, just that mine doesn't have a history or class divide that other countries might have. Even if we do have a class divide, the middle is seen as the best place to be.

I have a problem of a similar nature actually; one of my favorite doctors is actually a PA (Physician's Assistant). She's totally awesome and about the same age as me; we have a similar family background and can chat about life. I've repeatedly asked the nurses how I should refer to her because I feel that calling her "Miss Lastname" devalues her considerable skill as a physician (seriously, she's better than almost any doctor I've ever had). They have no answer. I don't want to seem disrespectful by just calling her her first name, and calling her "Miss Firstname" is just as devaluing, in my eyes, and also kind of condescending-sounding.

So, I just don't call her anything when we talk. It's amazing how you can have a conversation with someone and never use their name. At home I refer to her fondly by her first name, but not in the office. I wish she had a title worthy of her abilities.

In another office I was in we had a PA and everyone just called him by his first name, which he was fine with and (most of) the patients were fine with (some called him Mr. Last Name). It can be kind of tough in that situation, though, since they're not actually a doctor, but some people don't feel comfortable with using their first name, and Mr./Miss doesn't totally seem right either.

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