For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1665052
PaulB wrote:As for "right" or "courtesy", some dentists seem to refer themselves as Dr. these days. That has not always been the case, so when did that happen and is it a right or a courtesy or something else?
As I said, I'm curious and guess that many people won't be aware of the distinctions.


In the 80s dentists as a body decided that they should have a right to call themselves 'Dr' in view of their long and complicated training and petitioned for this to happen:

There was initially some resistance from the old school on the basis that staring in somone's gob for several years :wink: didn't constitute a full medical education, but most people couldn't care less what they were called so they all earned the right to be called 'Dr'.

It happens that many dentists are double qualified and are Fellows of one of the surgical Colleges in Maxillo-Facial Surgery as well and will call themselves 'Mr'.
(History lesson: only Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England are strictly entitled to use 'Mr': Fellows of the RCS of Edinburgh and of RCS&P of Ireland as well as Australian and American Surgical Colleges still use 'Dr'.)

In the UK however any Consultant in one of the Surgical Specialities will call himself 'Mr' for reasons I guess of consistency and to avoid confusing the great unwashed that PaulB alludes to.

There is however no logic tin a female surgeon calling herself 'Mrs'. :wink:

Peter :thumleft:
Last edited by PeteSpencer on Sun Jan 13, 2019 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
#1665053
Today’s Sunday Times has a new health writer. He’s Adam Kay who wrote a book about how he decided to stop being a doctor and let his licence lapse. The paper calls him a former doctor, but he is pictured in surgical scrubs. Go figure.
PaulB liked this
#1665062
In a similar vein, when I last applied for a passport I put "Captain" as my title. The PO phoned me and asked me what sort of Captain I was, I told them Merchant Navy. They explained that they didn't recognise civilian Captains (MN & airlines) and I told them it didn't really matter either way.

The passport was issued and posted to Captain Popeye!

Yes, I know, in the MN Captain is an honorary title, legally I was master of whatever ship I was commanding at the time, but the passengers all called me Captain.
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#1665065
PeteSpencer wrote:
Jim Jones wrote:Today’s Sunday Times has a new health writer. He’s Adam Kay who wrote a book about how he decided to stop being a doctor and let his licence lapse. The paper calls him a former doctor, but he is pictured in surgical scrubs. Go figure.


viewtopic.php?f=6&t=108782



That’s the one. Maybe you can never leave?
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1665071
Jim Jones wrote:
PeteSpencer wrote:
Jim Jones wrote:Today’s Sunday Times has a new health writer. He’s Adam Kay who wrote a book about how he decided to stop being a doctor and let his licence lapse. The paper calls him a former doctor, but he is pictured in surgical scrubs. Go figure.


viewtopic.php?f=6&t=108782



That’s the one. Maybe you can never leave?


My guess is he opted to keep his name on the GMC register: Much less hassle for a few quid than coming off then going back on again and he retains the right to call himself 'Dr'
I only use 'Dr' when writing stinky letters to British Gas.

Oh and Physicians can wear scrubs.....

The one thing that kinda pis ses me off is when a young doctor fresh out of Med School marches up to a patient and says ' My name is Doctor Fred Armpit.

No it isn't: its Fred Armpit he didnt start from the womb bearing a scroll, gown and ermine hood. :roll:

That comes much later.

Peter
#1665075
rikur_ wrote:.. the Queen had never complained and just chose Mrs from the list...


ISTR hearing that, in the first national Census, Queen Victoria was registered at Buckingham Palace, with Prince Albert first as 'Head of Household' (because a married woman not a widow could not be a H of H) :)

In US and possibly Canada, Surgeons, Dentists and Veterinarians routinely use the title 'Dr'; the postnominals being MD DDS and (IIRC) DVM. One of my uncles (MBs + PhDs), internationally distinguished in his medical field ('industrial psychology' or what we now call ergonomics), was invited in '50s to address a related conference in the US. The organisers almost withdrew the invitation when he submitted his paper synopsis using his correct postnominals (several) which did not include 'MD'; they asked him to confirm that he was a 'proper doctor' :roll:
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By Flyin'Dutch'
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1665080
In order to ensure medics in the Netherlands don't get ideas above their station the opening sentence of the prof. giving our very first lecture was

1. Don't think you are special - there are more doctors than bakers in this country
2. Look to your neighbour - one of you won't be studying medicine in a year's time

And you know what they say:

Question - What's the difference between God and a doctor?

Answer - God knows he's not a doctor.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1665085
We used to have a string of SHOs over from the Netherlands who told us it was dead easy to get into medical school and qualify as a doctor in Netherlands
The difficulty was getting a job post qualification and get a foot on the progression ladder, so one of ours worked in MacDs for 18 months before a job came along, another in a gents outfitters.

Peter
#1665088
Flyin'Dutch' wrote:..

Answer - God knows he's not a doctor.


As I may have posted before .. :oops: .. in the JAM Trident, when I have visitors from the clinical professions, I sometimes explain the pilots (Captain/Copilot)/FE hierarchy by saying "it's a bit like the operating theatre: the Surgeon thinks he's God, the anaesthetist knows she's God .." :wink:
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By Flyin'Dutch'
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1665097
PeteSpencer wrote:We used to have a string of SHOs over from the Netherlands who told us it was dead easy to get into medical school and qualify as a doctor in Netherlands
The difficulty was getting a job post qualification and get a foot on the progression ladder, so one of ours worked in MacDs for 18 months before a job came along, another in a gents outfitters.

Peter


:roll:

Clearly.

In fact, without MacDonalds and experience in a gents' outfitters you won't get in.

Where do you think my exquisite palate and dress sense were developed?

:wink:

Worry not, the less clever ones were dispatched to East Angular - to fit in with the locals.

:cyclopsani:

Joking aside, it isn't and wasn't easy to get in as there was a numerus clausus.

Getting a training place after the basic training was equally challenging*, hence why a fair few of us went to the UK after the initial training. Other popular choices were Germany, Belgium and.........Norway.

I chose the UK as the system is similar and the UK is the country where primary care has its roots and training, although tough, was considered the best with a good amount of hard clinical work, rather than an overbearing amount of mamba-pamby social medicine. As I had an affinity with the latter, and had already worked in psychiatry and occupational health post my graduation, I saw this as a good complement to my skills and training. It paid off and I have since spent many years in clinical work in General Practice and further experience in NHS Management, Clinical Governance, Forensic Medicine and Aviation Medicine.

*on account of the Dutch government extending training length but funding this by reducing training spaces by 2/3rd. Unsurprisingly they now have a shortage!
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1665105
We used to joke when I was an engineering student (and the engineering and medical faculties were in a permanent state of intra-campus banter over status, qualifications, workload, and anything else, that occurred to us at the time) that whilst medics could bury their mistakes, engineers had to live with theirs.

TItles - I think that anybody who has earned a title, and society decided many years ago that this applied to physicians, should consider that they have every right to use it. There may be sound reasons: many women with doctoral level qualifications deliberately never use Mrs/Miss/Ms and always use Dr. in any professional context to make a clear statement that matters to them (and why shouldn't it) that neither their sex nor their marital status are relevant to what they're doing.

Personally Dr. is the title I use most often of those I'm entitled to - it's well understood, a personal title not attached to any specific role that could be taken away from me, and if it's appropriate for women to make their sex irrelevant, as a fairly strident feminist myself, it's also appropriate for me to also make my sex relatively irrelevant. Also, depending upon how you measure it, that title took me somewhere between 8 and 17 years to earn and I'm bloody proud of it. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever confused me with a physician for more than about 30 seconds.

G
kanga liked this
#1665128
Flyin'Dutch' wrote:

Worry not, the less clever ones were dispatched to East Angular - to fit in with the locals.



Ah, so the Dutch have their equivalent of bon pour l'Orient :snooty:

I suppose the Dutch have a likeness for East Anglia; "Very flat, Norfolk", as Noel Coward observed.

Bill H
By PaulB
#1665136
Thinking about all of this, and irrespective of whether the "Dr" title is by right or courtesy, is it that the title comes with the award of the degree and not the registration with the regulator?

This is unlike, say, an optometrist, where the award of the degree confers no title, and the graduate can only call themselves an optometrist when registered with the Health Professions Council. (I think they regulate optometry.) This is because the title optometrist is a protected title, unlike doctor or, as JJ pointed out earlier, nurse. (That said, I believe physician & "registered nurse" are protected.)

Whilst, I don't object to it, I don't know who decided that dentists could call themselves "Dr" on the award of their degree.

Interesting discussion.....