Call Me By My True Name

By Steve Paulus, DO

As a fourth year Osteopathic medical student, I would occasionally get aggravated over the lack of professional acknowledgement I received from patients, staff, or other individuals in the hospital. At one point my irritation reached my limit and I vented my intense feelings to a particularly wise and gifted teacher. From my frustrated perspective I impatiently answered my own question and told him that this problem, of disrespect, would simply solve itself next year after I graduated and could finally call myself Dr. Paulus.

Bill Bain, DO was an “old time” family physician who was my preceptor for a primary care rotation. He gave me a wide variety of pragmatic clinical pearls but it was a personal pearl of wisdom that helped me the most.

He told me: “Steve, I spent the first five years after graduation trying to convince patients to call me Dr. Bain and the last 30 years tying to convince them to call me Bill.” He elucidated, “Respect is not something you get from a title or a degree, rather respect is something you earn based upon who you are.”

In my office, patients call me by my true name—Steve. My parents didn’t name me “doctor”, so why do I need a title to displace who I really am?