"Oh, it stands for doctor of osteopathic medicine. When you get a medical degree there are two possible degrees a school can give you to make you a physician/doctor. Most give MD. Because of history some give DO. Mine gave a DO. You should look it up. Now let me see that swollen testicle of yours"
Most nurses refer to my degree as MD if they ever specifically do so. I haven't figured out if they use MD as a term for all degrees that make you a physician (e.g. 'yea doc, you get that respect once you get the MD" or if they think that is specifically my degree. Since MBBCh, MBBS types also outnumber DOs in my area, the term MD is technically inaccurate for most physicians in the hospital anyway, so I always assumed the use of the term "MD" at times by nurses was casual term usage. I've never corrected them because I've never seen them get it wrong on documents, where they take time to look up my degree.
And in the irony of all irony, the only two times I've seen MD attending be anything but completely degree blind was two attendings from AOA programs who were MDs and felt that all DOs needed to answer for why they went DO instead of MD to evaluate their ability to be honest about themself. If you said it's because you loved DO blah blah blah, they would not want you in their program. The correct answers are "I have a very strong geographic preference and wasn't good enough for the MD schools in my area" or "I decided late that I wanted to be a doctor and I had too many bad grades early dragging my overall application down". These were major players at an AOA program. Never seen an MD attending in any ACGME program treat me differently. Some may have shared that thought, but the only one to do anything to suggest they had that thought (and they flat out said it to me) were in an AOA program.
