Personally, the urology team is always a nice approachable group that I've never heard anyone complain about, as are the ophtho folks where I'm at. But I am sure there are places where this is not true.
It is going to be dependent on the group of docs in each specialty where you are. For example, in my hospital, the neurosurgeons are well known to be arrogant jerks and the oncologists to never tell patients the true extent of their disease and therefore don't give them accurate prognosis ("what do you mean I only have a few months to live? Dr. so and so wants to start salvage chemo and thinks I'll respond")....so other docs in the hospital are always frustrated when having to deal with them, especially since we come off as the bad guys by being forthcoming with our patients.
However, the above poster thinks otherwise in his hospital...
As far as respect, I think there are multiple ways to look at it. For example, the specialties where everybody works crazy hours (usually surgical specialties) and take a lot of call get a certain amount of respect from some other specialties. Docs who are willing to come in in the middle of the night to do something emergently for a patient (IR, GI, cards, some surgical fields) get certain amount of respect. Docs who do things others can't do due to the difficulty of dealing emotionally with their types of patients (i.e. deal with NICU babies, or do palliative care, or burn surgeons, to name a few) get respect from those who know they can't handle dealing with those patients.
Honestly, the way to get respect from others, regardless of your field, is to be pleasant, take good care of your patients, respond to your pages in a timely manner, follow through, and be respectful to others (RNs, MDs, students alike).
Everyone is so grumpy here and gets upset over nothing. There's some nice people, but yeah. There's also this one resident who I'm pretty sure is Jeffrey Dahmer after hours. I'll be doin some stuff and I'll catch him starring at me with a blank face.
