At work, I have to interact with doctors a lot as part of my role. Obviously when I worked as an inpatient nurse, I also worked with doctors a lot, but in a different capacity.
Now, my role in Transplant Quality is considered part of Transplant Administration, so instead of working in a more traditional medical “hierarchy” of Doctor>Nurse, we are all more just… colleagues.
Most of the meetings I attend or facilitate are comprised of admin people: program leaders (nurse managers), program directors, medical directors and surgical directors.
Obviously when I talk to the nurse managers or regular program leaders, I call them by their first name. However, I still have a hard time calling the doctors by their first names!
When I worked on the unit we always called them “Dr. So-and-So” (e.g. “Excuse me, Dr. So-and-So, Patient X’s urine output is down; do you want a fluid bolus?”) This felt appropriate and totally normal, even though the doctors certainly never called me Nurse Lopez. LOL.
Anyway, now that we’re working on projects, program admin and initiatives together, most everyone just speaks to each as “equals”. Not that nurses and doctors shouldn’t always be equals?! But historically, nurses have always been seen as working “under” the doctors, or reporting to them, in a sense.
It feels so weird to call them by their first names though!! It is such a hard habit to break. For some reason, it still just feels wrong for me to call the Medical Director, let’s call him, Bob. (His name is not Bob.) He is always DOCTOR M. to me….
Now, an interesting note. The Surgical Director for one of the programs is female. I don’t know if it’s because she didn’t work here back when I still worked inpatient, so I never really knew her as a “superior”, or if it’s because she’s just generally more approachable, but for whatever reason, it feels a lot easier and more natural for me to call her, let’s call her, Sally, instead of Dr. G.
My coworker and I were talking about this the other day. (She also used to work on the unit with me.) She also said she feels super weird calling the male Medical Director by his first name, but said, “Yeah, I don’t know why, but it feels easier to call Sally (the Surgical Director) Sally!” Then we both laughed and were like- Oh, of course….it’s because she’s a WOMAN!! I think deep down those old patriarchal systems are still mapped in our brains…. 😅
I should note, it’s not like the male Med Director is asking us to call him by his title. In fact, he called me last week and said, “Hi, this is Bob”, and he also signed a recent email to me “Bob” (not his real name). So this is really just my own issue at this point! Ha. It’s still interesting to think about it all.
I think it’s always nice to use peoples’ titles in general, out of respect, and if we were in a patient care setting I would still absolutely refer to the doctors by their titles in front of the patients. I also still find myself always writing “Hi Dr. So-and-So,” in emails. But in these “behind closed doors” meetings, everyone just uses first names, so it’s almost more weird if I’m the only one still over here using their title + last name, I think? Like instead of coming off as respectful, I feel like it just kind of makes me look… sort of childish? For some reason? It’s weird!!
Anyone ever experience anything similar?
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GRATEFUL KAE 
NO ONE EVER CALLS ME DOCTOR. **sigh** (Students DO call me Mrs. Jedd, and I always say DOCTOR in that case, but I sign things with my first name and prefer to be called that– students are reluctant now that I am so old, so I do get a few Dr. Jedds but mostly a generic professor)
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I think it would be super difficult to shift that way of addressing docs after you are so accustomed to addressing them by title in a patient situation! My dad’s nursing staff — some of whom became very dear family friends, with whom we would spend vacations and holidays — always called him Dr. X, except in person. That was back in the 80s and 90s though, and maybe there was a different level of “respect” expected between patients and doctors? I know my husband feels a little miffed when patients address him by his first name, but I don’t think he would object to his nursing staff doing so!
The title thing is something I struggle with when it comes to people at my daughter’s school. I feel like the teaching staff invites parents to call them by their first names, but obviously the kids refer to them as Mr. or Ms. Sometimes I default to calling them Mr. or Ms. even when there aren’t kids around! Definitely a different situation when you are working with colleagues, though. I can understand feeling childish about using titles, but I doubt that anyone would think of you as childish!
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As a doctor I would say 2 things about this. First I really don’t care what people call me. Dr. Goddard and Gillian are both just fine with me. Second, there are doctors who I trained with that I would struggle to call by their first names. Both men and women. I do think the asymmetrical power relationship is hard to break out of.
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As a patient who doesn’t often see an M.D. I also struggle with this! My PCP is an RN and I saw CNMs for the entirety of my first pregnancy. It feels more respectful to say [Title] [Name], but I was never sure how to do that – Midwife Helen? Nurse Sarah? Ms. LastName? I appreciate nurses for all they do and I just want to make sure I’m respecting them!
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I don’t think we have this problem at work, everyone calls everyone by first name. But I guess the more you call them by first name the less weird would be.
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In college, I got a part time job at a bookstore, and one of my old high school teachers worked there part time in the summer! It took me a while to stop calling him Mr. So and So. He even told me, we’re colleagues here, you have to use my first name.
It was awkward and I still wasn’t totally used to it but I made myself start using his first name.
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We run into this a lot in the opera world, which is very hierarchical. When I was starting out, I was told that you ALWAYS call principal singers Mr./Ms. Last Name. And you ALWAYS call conductors Maestro. Sometimes it’s Maestro Last Name, but it’s always Maestro.
We’ve moved past calling principal singers Mr./Ms. Last Name in every day situations – now we mostly call them by their first name. A lot of it is a formality thing that is loosening up, but some of it is a move away towards gender neutral forms of address. We used to page them to stage with Mr./Ms Last Name and now we just use full names.
But conductors, I still call Maestro. I don’t know if I’ll ever do differently because they kind of are at the top of the food chain in the opera world. Funny story – I once worked with a fairly young conductor with a very long first name and on the first day of rehearsal, the director asked him, “What do I call you?” And the very young, very cocky conductor said, “You may call me Maestro.” It was kind of obnoxious, but that mindset is very common.
It is a little weird now because Maestro is technically a male term (Italian for “master”) and not all conductors are male, but we still call them Maestro. I guess we could call female conductors Maestra, but that seems odd to me.
Now our executive director, I always call Mr. Last Name in front of the crew/backstage. It’s definitely a respect thing, especially since he’s on the younger side, I want to be able to set that tone with him even though I call him by his first name in a lot of other settings.
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Some patients use “Dr” to me and I also get a lot of “Miss Sarah” which . . . I really never correct because I don’t think it’s coming from a negative place. BUT, I highly doubt our male endo ever gets Mr. Mauricio.
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I come from a formal background, so everyone gets titles. My kids’ teachers are Ms/Mr Whatever. Neighbors are Mr/Ms around the kids. My colleagues at work – I call them Dr whatever or Ms Whatever for the most part. I do not want students calling me by my first name – no indeed, though some professors like that. I like structured roles ( I am friendly but not their friend!). Professor works for me. A few young men called me ” Miss firstname” which was not great but they had a southern accent and earnest natures, so I let it slide.
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doctor reader here! It mildly irks me when patients call me by my first name (WHY is it always the middle aged and older men!?!) but I usually remind myself that I rarely call them Mr so and so. My nursing colleagues happily call me Alyssa and I use their first names as well.
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I agree that in a situation like yours where you’re all back office colleagues it makes sense to use first names.
But, in medicine the gendered use (or absence) of titles is a real phenomenon and has been documented in settings ranging from grand rounds (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28437214/) to patient portal messages (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9535496/). n public, professional situations where men are given a title, women are more likely to be called by just by a first name, which is a way of disempowering and/or discrediting them based on gender.
So, I guess on behalf of Surgeon Sally I would advocate for either using Bob AND Sally (which, again, sounds totally fine!), or sticking with Dr X & Dr Y. I’m sure you don’t mean it this way, but its not really fair to your female Surgical Director to perpetuate a discrepancy she doesn’t deserve.
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I am like MBM; we were raised to call everyone Mr. or Mrs. and so I still have that in my head a little. Also, when I was working with an advisor, we always called him Mr. Smith in front of the clients; I would never casually drop his first name to a client, even though they and he used first names. It was such a habit that I would sometimes do it when we were not around the clients too. I would also never call a client by their first name; they were always Mr. Jones, even though the advisor called them by their first name. Even when some clients would say to call them by their first, our boss wanted us to still call them Mr./Mrs.
The funny thing is that we were known as the formal team, and we would joke by calling all of the other advisors by their Mr./Mrs. title too (there were not very many, if any, women though). However, my boss left and our new advisor was a lot younger and he wanted us to drop the formality, but for me, I couldn’t. There was no way after 8 years of calling Mr. Jones Mr. Jones, I was going to suddenly call him Bob.
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I was also raised to call everyone Mr. or Mrs. I had a couple friends in high school where I eventually started calling their parents by their first names (at their request) but it felt suuuuper weird! I do think what you’re saying is true- sort of how you meet someone is how you stick with it. So in this case I think because I met this one physician up on the unit now I’m used to that and that’s probably why it feels so strange!
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You know when this comes up for me- when I go to my doctor, who is actually a PA. I ALWAYS see her (I’ve actually never seen the doctor at this practice, only my PA.) I have so much respect for her- she has taken SUCH good care of me throughout the years. But I’m never sure what to call her. Whenever I call the practice for whatever reason, I always awkwardly say “Hi, I’m a patient of Elizabeth Elam.” But everyone at the practice refers to her as “Lizzy.” I just CANNOT call and say “I’d like to make an appointment with Lizzy.” It seems so wrong!
I do think there’s a gender difference, here, as you and a couple commenters have pointed out. People are much more likely to refer to a woman by her first name or “Miss Sarah,” than a man. Hmm.
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Haha, I can see that!! Especially if the name is more casual or feels more like a nickname. It is kind of funny, now that you mention it, because everyone calls the doctors Dr and the PAs and the NPs by their first names… I do the same thing in my personal life! I would never call my doctor Victoria!! But when I saw an NP this year I think of her as Kristin.
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We do not have this dynamic in my industry since it’s very very rare for someone to have their doctorate and if they did, they would never go by Dr. There is a jerky guy we work with and we kind of raise our eyebrows about him listing his PhD in his signature but it’s in a field with no application to what we do. I mean his PhD is in something like “German studies” and we work in finance….
I only call my doctors “doctor X” but that’s also how they have introduced themselves. And I only have female physicians! I barely know their first names actually! So when I have to provide their names, I’m always stumbling a bit to recall what it is!
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You may or may not know that in Germany we have a much more formal way in addressing people. It has loosened up in recent years, but unless your friends or someone has invited you to address them informally, you ALWAYS address adults, people you don’t know well and people in professional settings with Mr. or Mrs. (or Dr.).
When I moved the US, it was very difficult to me to call superiors (at work) by their first names. Now I am pretty used to it and find settings weird, where people insist on a formal title.
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