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Name calling etiquette
Started by Hemichordate
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Having dealt with this many times especially in the case of fellows who stay on as faculty, my practice has always been to address them as Dr. in front of patients and hospital staff but referred to them by their first name if that's what they indicate they prefer.
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deleted87716
I thought this thread was going to be about something completely different. 🙁
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We always referred to the new attending/former resident as we always have i.e. by their first name; the new interns addressed them as Dr. ____. We never referred to each other by first names in front of patients, so that still didn't change.
What about former residents who start working at the same place where they trained? Do they continue to address their former attendings as Dr., or are they now allowed to call them by their first names?
Wildest situation I ever saw. An IM attending decided to go back and do a residency in EM. I was a med student and he and I were working up a patient in the ED. We go to present the case and the EM attending is a guy who is in his first year out and had been an intern and a resident on this now EM intern's service. The "intern" presents the case and the attending pauses and says "You realize how weird this is right?" They both had a good laugh about it. It helped that these were two of the best guys I've ever met in medicine. First names all around.
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deleted87716
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We had something similar.
A former surgery attending went back to do Rads (the entire DR plus IR fellowship); as a resident he wanted to be called by his first name, but that was difficult for those who had known him as Dr previously.
2 of my current fellow Nephro fellows were the current Nephro attendings' IM attendings !!
I am in this situation. Last names are so ingrained in me because of my Army years so I am having some trouble switching over, but many of them have specifically said I can/should address them by their first name. Then again, as a resident I got to be fairly friendly with one of the attendings (who now works in the community) and his wife to the point we hang out together and I have gone to their ski condo with them. Despite that, my first instinct is to call them Dr X and Y (different last names) although mostly that is just when speaking about them to other people (how often do you use peoples names when talking to them).
The residents and students I was friendly with prior to converting are still allowed to use my first name, but they use Dr dpmd when speaking to me in front of anyone else in the hospital. They do it to let everyone else know they are showing me an attending level of respect (and therefore they should too).
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I have a few attendings who did their residency here, and they call their former attendings by their first names, with one notable exception (the man is a bit of a legend).
What throws me off is when some of the nurses refer to an attending by their first name because they've known them for so long. One time, I had no idea who they were telling me had just been up on the floor writing orders...
