Anyone else getting butthurt at Physical Therapists saying they are "doctors"

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Kingsmen2018

Kingsmen2018

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Like not to sound arrogant or anything, but I hear "future doctor" and "med school" when I hear people talking about DPT program or student. I understand the D in DPT stands for doctor but this is driving me nuts lol. Just a little misleading
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Kingsmen2018 said:
Like not to sound arrogant or anything, but I hear "future doctor" and "med school" when I hear people talking about DPT program or student. I understand the D in DPT stands for doctor but this is driving me nuts lol. Just a little misleading
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DPTs are doctors in physical therapy. As MDs are doctors in medicine. They can be called Dr. X and so on. Saying I am a doctor alone can be misleading because people can think of a physician. It's totally fine to turn to people Dr. X with doctorate degrees in any discipline.

If one is trying to mislead people by making them think one is physician is wrong.
 
It’s misleading if the physical therapist offers the patient medical advice. For example, if the orthopaedic surgeon thinks that a patient needs surgery but the PT tells the patient that s/he is a doctor and that PT will work better, then that’s a conflict of interest & misleading.
 
DV-T said:
Not quite.

Joe Smith is a lawyer. He has a J.D. or Juris Doctorate or Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. He is addressed as Mr. Smith not Dr. Smith.
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That’s (mostly) not a legal thing, but a cultural thing. While technically one could call themselves doctor with a JD (except in some states where the title is restricted, though many have relaxed the restrictions), and in some other countries, they do, there are other reasons lawyers generally do not call themselves doctors.

The JD was a replacement degree for the LLB. It is the basic qualifying degree to practice law and doesn’t include any contribution to academia. The terminal degree in law is not the JD, but the SJD, which almost no one gets. It is effectively a PhD with different letters, as it requires coursework, a qualifying exam, and a dissertation. You also have to have a masters of law to apply (LLM).

The ABA actually put out a statement giving a false equivalency between the JD and a PhD by omitting a bunch of requirements for the PhD and comparing the first year of law school to the whole PhD. That’s pretty embarrassing, particularly when you think that there actually is a PhD equivalent law degree which requires years of sustained academic research.

So you technically could call yourself Dr whatever with a JD, but every lawyer will call you a pretentious d bag.
 
I work with a DNP who wears a long white coat around the clinic and introduces herself as Dr. X. She insists that everyone, including her physician coworkers, calls her Dr. X. Every MD/DO in the department goes by their first name.

A naive premed who was shadowing once asked her why she insists on the Doctor title. She replied, “because I went through the same training as these MDs. I’m fully capable of swapping war stories of the rigors of medical training.”
 
Fossa said:
I work with a DNP who wears a long white coat around the clinic and introduces herself as Dr. X. She insists that everyone, including her physician coworkers, calls her Dr. X. Every MD/DO in the department goes by their first name.

A naive premed who was shadowing once asked her why she insists on the Doctor title. She replied, “because I went through the same training as these MDs. I’m fully capable of swapping war stories of the rigors of medical training.”
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The appropriate follow-up question would be "so where did you do your residency?"
 
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I don't know why everyone here is defending the PT.

PT's play an important role in health care and should be treated with respect just like a nurse, physician, physician assistant, IT person should. But the issue here is that your patients for the most part are naive. If a PT calls themselves doctors, the patient will very often take their word as gospel. And then when upon the recommendation of a physician, they receive information thats contradictory they question it and say "well the other doctor told me I didn't have to". This is only one example of many many more that affect care.

AS for the technicality of "they are doctors", yes they are doctors not physicians. Unfortunately in our society, doctor is seen as equivalent to a physician. The PT knows this and abuses it because of their inferiority complex. Professors/researchers never call themselves 'doctors', they say they are researchers, principal investigators, professors, etc. Other people call them "Dr. Stevens" out of respect.

You can do the same with the PT, but the PT shouldn't be telling their patients that they are doctors.
 
What about the whole, DPT students are telling people they are going to Med school part? I have personally known one person who is going to be DPT telling people she is in med school and I also know another in naturopathic school also telling people she is in medical school. The problem with both scenarios, I think, is that both individuals seem to actually believe they are. The school leads them to believe they are basically in med school!
 
fourandtwo said:
What about the whole, DPT students are telling people they are going to Med school part? I have personally known one person who is going to be DPT telling people she is in med school and I also know another in naturopathic school also telling people she is in medical school. The problem with both scenarios, I think, is that both individuals seem to actually believe they are. The school leads them to believe they are basically in med school!
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Eh, I think it's fine. People are free to lie about going to medical school or not as long as they aren't harming patients with the misinformation of "I'm a doctor".
 
mcdocky said:
Eh, I think it's fine. People are free to lie about going to medical school or not as long as they aren't harming patients with the misinformation of "I'm a doctor".
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True, although they sure seem to be going down that route!
 
fourandtwo said:
True, although they sure seem to be going down that route!
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I feel like it has to be inferiority complex more than it is actually believing they are physicians.

It's tough for me to swallow that anyone would fall for that so hard that they'd think a DPT is equivalent to being a physician that has went through med school and residency .
 
As a soon-to-be student physical therapist, I'm not sure where all of this is coming from.

DPTs are Doctors of Physical Therapy, which does include the title of a "doctor" (which I personally hate due to the ridiculous financial burden that is now attached to it). I believe the title is given based on the degree obtained, not necessarily the profession. However, I have NEVER heard a physical therapist call him/herself Dr. X.

I have also never heard of anyone referring to a DPT program as medical school?? In fact, I myself just tell people I'm going to PT school. People who do say this are obviously wrong.
 
My whole experience with a doctor
"Hello, Doctor"
"Please, you can call me Tom 🙂"
"Er... Doctor Tom?"
I think I have some issues..
 
It's true that PTs are, in a sense, doctors... but to say that PT students attend "medical school" is to outright lie.

PT program at a medical university =/= medical school
 
Doctor actually comes from a Latin word, Docere that means teacher. Makes sense because as an MD you educate your patients on procedures so they can give informed consent. If you work in academic hospital, lots of teaching there.

I'll gladly address anyone as "Doctor" as long as they hold a doctorate. Since PAs don't have one, I will not address them with that title. DNPs I will.
 
Fossa said:
I work with a DNP who wears a long white coat around the clinic and introduces herself as Dr. X. She insists that everyone, including her physician coworkers, calls her Dr. X. Every MD/DO in the department goes by their first name.

A naive premed who was shadowing once asked her why she insists on the Doctor title. She replied, “because I went through the same training as these MDs. I’m fully capable of swapping war stories of the rigors of medical training.”
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When I was an OR tech, I worked with a DNP like that. I called her by her first name.
 
During my first year of med school, we had an "inter-professional" teaching day in which they paired up MS1's (me) with 2nd year PT students to work on MSK cases together. Obviously the PT kids knew much more than we did since that was our first exposure to MSK anatomy and physiology while that's essentially all they study. I'm not sure if this was done on purpose to keep us in check or something lol.

Anyway, we went around the room introducing ourselves and one of the PT student girls made a point to mention that "I could have went to medical school if I wanted but I wanted more patient interaction. PT school has basically the same curriculum anyway (she came to this conclusion based on the fact that we both take neuro.)"

Something along the same lines happened when we had another inter-professional teaching day with PA students.

The bottom line is that M.D.'s are at the top of the food chain and don't have a sense of insecurity or feel the need to compete with those with lesser qualifications than them but our colleagues from among the other professions seem like they spend way too much of their time worrying about these things.
 
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I’m going to med school next year and my wife is finishing up her DPT. Just like a Phd they are “doctors” in the sense they have a doctorate degree. They are not physicians however and neither are DNPs. They are however experts in their field and should be regarded as such. Time for everyone to quit getting so butt hurt about small things that don’t matter
 
NYCdude said:
During my first year of med school, we had an "inter-professional" teaching day in which they paired up MS1's (me) with 2nd year PT students to work on MSK cases together. Obviously the PT kids knew much more than we did since that was our first exposure to MSK anatomy and physiology while that's essentially all they study. I'm not sure if this was done on purpose to keep us in check or something lol.

Anyway, we went around the room introducing ourselves and one of the PT student girls made a point to mention that "I could have went to medical school if I wanted but I wanted more patient interaction. PT school has basically the same curriculum anyway (she came to this conclusion based on the fact that we both take neuro.)"

Something along the same lines happened when we had another inter-professional teaching day with PA students.

The bottom line is that M.D.'s are at the top of the food chain and don't have a sense of insecurity or feel the need to compete with those with lesser qualifications than them but our colleagues from among the other professions seem like they spend way too much of their time worrying about these things.
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Wait until you meet your hospital's CEO.
 
ajb24 said:
I’m going to med school next year and my wife is finishing up her DPT. Just like a Phd they are “doctors” in the sense they have a doctorate degree. They are not physicians however and neither are DNPs. They are however experts in their field and should be regarded as such. Time for everyone to quit getting so butt hurt about small things that don’t matter
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The only thing DNPs are experts in are selling fluff studies to patients and dragging physicians through the mud.
 
The longer you practice medicine, the less the titles will mean. If you have developed a good rapport with your patients, built the trust that is needed for a good doctor-patient relationship, you patients and their families will come to you for advice and believe in you, even when the questions they have is not in your area of expertise.
And, at the end of the day, it is the MD or DO who co-signs the notes of the NP and OT/PT folks. They ultimately still need you, just as you need them; it's team work.
As for me, I prefer not to be called Dr. HuskyMD, especially when I am not at work, best to keep low profile or else will be bombarded with requests for medical advice.
 
NYCdude said:
The bottom line is that M.D.'s are at the top of the food chain and don't have a sense of insecurity or feel the need to compete with those with lesser qualifications than them but our colleagues from among the other professions seem like they spend way too much of their time worrying about these things.
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MDs cannot accomplish much on their own, even in a clinic. They write prescriptions, which are processed by another branch of health care: pharmacists. In a hospital, MDs cannot get much done without nurses to care for the patients while they handle the orders and interpret the patient's charts. A great physician listens to their nurses, who spend more time with the patients. One of the physicians I shadowed won dozens of awards and one of the reason is because she always runs her orders by her nurses instead of acting like she knows everything.
 
I have seen some PTs having a chip on their shoulder about the hierarchy of the healthcare team, but I’d be shocked if a considerable percentage of them attempt this “Dr.” Nonsense. Probably not enough to get up in arms about it, although when it does occur clearly it is at the very least unprofessional and at its worst deceiving to patients.
 
infectiousdisease101 said:
MDs cannot accomplish much on their own, even in a clinic. They write prescriptions, which are processed by another branch of health care: pharmacists. In a hospital, MDs cannot get much done without nurses to care for the patients while they handle the orders and interpret the patient's charts. A great physician listens to their nurses, who spend more time with the patients. One of the physicians I shadowed won dozens of awards and one of the reason is because she always runs her orders by her nurses instead of acting like she knows everything.
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You're arguing against a point that nobody made.
 
Honestly, I always wonder why people get so pissy over titles? I could care less if I was an attending and people called me by my first name. People who are pissy over titles need their ego checked. I can understand if the younger generation and co workers called me by my title to not risk sounding disrespectful and playing it safe. But to hold some god complex over a title and talk down on PTs like someone above said, that's just sad.
 
Fossa said:
I work with a DNP who wears a long white coat around the clinic and introduces herself as Dr. X. She insists that everyone, including her physician coworkers, calls her Dr. X. Every MD/DO in the department goes by their first name.

A naive premed who was shadowing once asked her why she insists on the Doctor title. She replied, “because I went through the same training as these MDs. I’m fully capable of swapping war stories of the rigors of medical training.”
Click to expand...

NYCdude said:
You're arguing against a point that nobody made.
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I want to work in an environment or even hopefully create one where we all go by first names.
 
OrthoTraumaMD said:
I can’t “like” this enough.


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Yeah. Sorry, I'll happily call a PhD doctor in the classroom or lab, and I would honestly call a DNP doctor in a classroom setting. But when you walk around same day surgery introducing yourself to patients as Dr. Whatever, you're just confusing them. I may have let it go if she wasn't so smug about it. I definitely have heard her contradict something one of the surgeons told a patient, which is bad enough--but when you've introduced yourself as doctor, now there is a false equivalency that the patient is confused by. Very unsafe. But of course, she would never get fired because who is her boss?
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Yeah. Sorry, I'll happily call a PhD doctor in the classroom or lab, and I would honestly call a DNP doctor in a classroom setting. But when you walk around same day surgery introducing yourself to patients as Dr. Whatever, you're just confusing them. I may have let it go if she wasn't so smug about it. I definitely have heard her contradict something one of the surgeons told a patient, which is bad enough--but when you've introduced yourself as doctor, now there is a false equivalency that the patient is confused by. Very unsafe. But of course, she would never get fired because who is her boss?
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Ha, during my Ob rotation we had some lectures done by midwives on fetal heart tracings and stuff like that. The midwife who taught us had a Ph.D in some other related field. Out of respect I called her Dr. X because she didn't go through all those years of school for some punk med student to call her Jessica or Ashley (not her real name obviously.) Anyway, she sternly told me to never call her that again because she didn't want to be confused as a doctor as that would in her own words "confuse the patients." Now that's what I call integrity. Fortunately, most of the NPs and PAs at our hospital introduce themselves as "(first name) the NP or PA."
 
NYCdude said:
Ha, during my Ob rotation we had some lectures done by midwives on fetal heart tracings and stuff like that. The midwife who taught us had a Ph.D in some other related field. Out of respect I called her Dr. X because she didn't go through all those years of school for some punk med student to call her Jessica or Ashley (not her real name obviously.) Anyway, she sternly told me to never call her that again because she didn't want to be confused as a doctor as that would in her own words "confuse the patients." Now that's what I call integrity. Fortunately, most of the NPs and PAs at our hospital introduce themselves as "(first name) the NP or PA."
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Awesome. I would have had a lot of respect for her and probably called her Dr whenever patients weren't around lol. I just find it hilarious that so many nurses with "doctorates" demand to be called doctor so they can trick patients into thinking they're physicians, but half the surgeons I worked with told their patients to call them by their first names. It really just does come down to feeling secure with your position in the team. Nurses who know their role (and not in a demeaning way) and embrace it are amazing and never have that inferiority complex that you see with nurses who have chips on their shoulders. Fortunately, the vast majority of the nurses I worked with in the OR were awesome.
 
I work as an inpatient rehab tech with 30 other PT's and I have never heard a single one refer to themselves as "Dr. X".

Although there was one PT who was trying to convince this patient that PT was a better option than surgery and mistakenly called the Neurosurgeon the Neurologist repeatedly, which clearly confused the patient. That was a cringeworthy moment.
 
Govols22 said:
I work as an inpatient rehab tech with 30 other PT's and I have never heard a single one refer to themselves as "Dr. X".

Although there was one PT who was trying to convince this patient that PT was a better option than surgery and mistakenly called the Neurosurgeon the Neurologist repeatedly, which clearly confused the patient. That was a cringeworthy moment.
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My wife went to PT for an ITB injury, and every DPT in there called themselves Dr. Whatever. But they were in their office, not a hospital.
 
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