Being Human, Social Media and the Science of Loneliness

credit:tacluda

200 million tweets are sent through 50 million Twitter accounts every day, 665 million people share 2.5B in updates, photos and likes on Facebook each month.

The number of people living alone and eating alone has nearly doubled in the last 40 years, rising from from 9 to 16 per cent.

To put these two together, one might wonder if we prefer each other with a screen in between.

What it means.

Possibly nothing.

If we are disintegrating collectively and filling a communal void with tweets, it's not happening quickly. Visually, behaviors seem to be changing but perhaps it is only our tools that are evolving.

Social media is a new tool, just as the telephone was a new tool in 1876. Life changing, yes, but were we not already talking to each other before Alexandra Bell came along?

And before social media, we communicated in all its splendor.

President Rutherford B. Hayes, after seeing the telephone demonstrated apparently commented to Alexandra Bell; "That’s an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"

Everyone, it seems.

Less than 150 years later, the National Office of Statistics report that 94% of adults own a mobile phone. On the last count there were 82.7 million mobile phone subscriptions in the UK alone -- more phone subscriptions than pairs of ears.

Social media has unshackled us from the limits of sleep, work and study cliques. Connecting us beyond the immediate reach of an arm's length, we are freed a little. We can communicate quickly, cheaply -- for free even, and most importantly, whilst on the go.

For everyone of us, especially those of us with a disability, social media has been an enabler.

For those who have a disability, social media is an opportunity to showcase what they CAN do, rather than what they can’t. It gives them an opportunity to have others get to know them as ‘a person,’ rather than a person with a disability." Rachel Strella, Owner of strellasocialmedia.com @RachelStrella

It's hard to see a downside to our social needs being courted by social media.

Those quick to point out a slope would perhaps suggest that we are over reliant on social media, "phubbing" a friend at any given opportunity, becoming lonelier, more anxious, less willing to socialize, observing and "drinking people in" through screens, choosing information over experience.

The innovation of loneliness - http://vimeo.com/70534716

The Science of Loneliness

People have always been lonely.

The human capacity to feel alone starkly realized by poets and the chronically alone, long before the first scientific paper.

In the paper "Loneliness," John T. Cacioppo & Louise C. Hawkley of the University of Chicago's Center for Neuroscience trace the first scientific paper on loneliness just 50 years to the now classic psychoanalytic treatise by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann in 1969.

According to John T. Cacioppo and Louise C. Hawkley, we are at our loneliest during our teens and in our 80s -- travelling from one lonely port to another, free temporarily bar the misfortune of befalling "chronic" or "state" loneliness;

Chronic: the experience of loneliness particular to an introspective, depressive personality

State: the temporary loneliness experienced when moving to an unfamiliar new country, for example.

Snowflakes

There will always be the sociable and the less so.

Genetic disposition, social exposure and our personal need to reach out to others will always differ. We are snowflakes in our social needs.

Social media seems to have nestled into civvy street, yet bars have not closed (many have - recession is a deal breaker for low footfall), clubs are yet to follow suite. As my colleague *John pointed out recently, there are some things for which old fashioned face-to-face contact can not be beat.

Arguably, rather than our networks consisting of 500 people that we could not exchange a furtive glance with, they are perhaps instead built up around a nucleus of people we would be with regardless of a wireless connection.

We have them not just in our minds but in our pockets too. We can connect during our lonely commute, quicken the reality of a slow day or simply say hello just because we can. We have our fill of information, follow our interests and connect with those we might not normally sojourn with, and enjoy that too.

Cavemen gravitated around a quota of 150 meaningful social connections. Despite the passing of thousands of years, our limit for meaningful social connection still sits tight at 150.

In an article in Bloomberg Business Week, writer Drake Bennet explains how Robert Dunbar, evolutionary psychologist, studied the capacity for families to sustain meaningful relationships before the net revolution, with no networks to analyse.

Dunbar counted the number of Christmas cards sent by families to quantify the number of meaningful relationships in a household. Card sending proved a solid method of identifying evidence of a meaningful relationship - you need an address before you even think about it and the enthusiasm to keep the relationship going to bother with the lick, stamp and post. 153 was the average number of cards sent by a household to friends, family and colleagues.

Until our brains double in size, 150 social connections will be the maximum number of relationships that we can maintain. Anthropologists note that any group formed and spilling over this number causes groups to sub divide to form new groups until the death knell of 150 forces the group to divide again.Businesses, communities and tribes all follow this rule of thumb.

Path, an online business offering 'one-to-one' or 'one-to-many' private messaging and sharing, based their maximum number of file sharers on the 'Durbar' number of 150, effectively moulding their businesss to the human limit -

What Dunbar’s research represents is that no matter how the march of technology goes on, fundamentally we’re all human, and being human has limits,” Dave Morin, Path co-founder told Business Week.

We might have more than 150 in our networks but the surplus is just padding with potential - fluff for following curiosity, intrigue and future possibilities. Surrounding the core of family and friends and useful, curious and potent in the possibility to turn into future friends, lovers, employers or clients.

Loneliness and inclusive fitness

Survival, in the fullest sense of the word; surviving to have offspring who survived to have offspring, depended on social bonds.

And in many ways, it still does.

Many offspring normally need little or no parenting to survive and reproduce. Humans, however, are born to the longest period of dependency of all species, essentially making us the biggest babies of them all.

To survive and evolve, simple reproductive ability is not enough. A social skill or two is needed to render you a part of a group, ensure your family are protected in your absence, provide provision when you are unable to yourself and thereby enhance your "inclusive fitness" -

Moreover, social connections and the behaviors they engender (e.g., cooperation, altruism, alliances) enhance the survival and reproduction of those involved, increasing inclusive fitness"
John T. Cacioppo & Louise C. Hawkley

Loneliness, and its avoidance, is a useful evolutionary tool. To be lonely, one might be spurred into action to "not be lonely." In doing so, social bonds might be repaired thus increasing your inclusive fitness and incidentally helping to secure the survival of genes in the process.

The dark side

Evolutionary dud - socializing that doesn't end in meeting and reproducing might be seen as an evolutionary waster.

Social mobility - there is little going on. Despite the technology, the social structures of class still prove to be a hard nut to crack.

Burned out - people are "forever switched on" which has proved in a study by the University of Florida to led to increased anxiety in younger people, and those who suffer anxiety.

Feel good factor - there is little, for young adults especially. A study into how young people felt after time spent on Facebook show that despite it being "an invaluable resource for fulfilling such needs by allowing people to instantly connect," it also points to a subsequent nose dive in wellbeing -

"Rather than enhancing well-being, as frequent interactions with supportive “offline” social networks powerfully do, the current findings demonstrate that interacting with Facebook may predict the opposite result for young adults—it may undermine it."
Dr Ethan Cross, University of Michigan.

Intimacy is awkward and awkwardness is to be avoided.

Sherry Turkle points to a leaning on technology at a cost to intimacy and authentic connection in "Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other."

We are however still the ones behind the screens.

The complaint is perhaps not with technology, but with the larger disappointment of finding that, despite the networks, social media and the myriad of ways to connect, we are still at the core, somewhat lonely -

"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. When we examine the moments, acts, and statements of all kinds of people -- not only the grief and ecstasy of the greatest poets, but also the huge unhappiness of the average soul…we find, I think, that they are all suffering from the same thing. The final cause of their complaint is loneliness." Thomas Woolfe

Notes:

University of Michigan - Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well Being in Young Adults http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0069841

Twitter blog figures:
https://blog.twitter.com/2011/200-million-tweets-day

The Rise of the Lonely Single:
http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/07/the-rise-of-the-lonely-single-twice-as-many-people-living-alone-3532248/

Imagining the Internet
http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1870.xhtml

Business Week article: The Dunbar number
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-10/the-dunbar-number-from-the-guru-of-social-networks

An Existential View of Loneliness http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/archives/an%20existential%20view%20of%20loneliness.htm

Image credit: thanks to Adrian van Leen of RGB Free Stock (taluda) http://www.rgbstock.com/user/TACLUDA

D is for Discrimination; The Rhetoric of Obesity.

Obesity is a threat to global health – the World Health Organisation reports that 2.8 million die each year as a result of obesity. 65% of the world’s population live in a country where overweight kills more than underweight.

According to the Trust for American Health, today’s generation will be the first in US history to live shorter and sicker lives than their parents.

The environment for many is “obesogenic,” by it’s very nature it contributes to obesity as a consequence of it being built up, urban, and offering only limited access to nutrient food and recreational space, yet an abundance of junk food.

In many ways, there is an element of powerlessness for the individual. This has been highlighted in the UK Gov Foresight report; “Tackling Obesities – Future Choices Project”, a UK Government Office of Science study into obesity. One of the main findings by the study is that obesity can no longer be prevented by individual action alone.

 

Major findings of the Foresight report  include -

• Modern living ensures that each generation is heavier than the one before
• The obesity epidemic cannot be prevented by individual action alone
• Preventing obesity requires a societal challenge, similar to climate change

 
 

Despite the research, the modern obesogenic environment that has been created is often ignored — blame set squarely on the lap of the overweight individual for being overweight. Disapproval for obesity is prolific; evident in media, society and individual opinion.

Images of obese individuals are prerequisite of articles on weight and obesity. The cliché of the typical overweight image in media made number 7 in the Independent Top Ten Visual Clichés, sharing the list of tired clichés along with wedding cake decorations for gay marriage, (number 1) and gas cooker flames for gas bill price hikes, (number 4).

Clichés are easy, and useful. The trouble with a cliché (excuse the one coming….) is that when a cliché is an image, it can speak a thousand words — most of them discriminative when compounding negative views held against a vulnerable group. A study published in PLOS One  found that most people considered overweight people as “lazy, unsuccessful, weak-willed” – an image of a large person at a fast food outlet will only cement the idea of the overweight as defective, less than.

 

D is for Discrimination

 

Women and children of low-income or low social economic status have been proven to be consistently more at risk of obesity than any other group, according to research by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

Adult Poverty and Obesity, The Relationship Based on General Trends (excerpt) -

• Based on a large national study, body mass index (or BMI, an indicator of excess body fat) was higher every year between 1986 and 2002 among adults in the lowest income group and the lowest education group than among those in the highest income and education groups, respectively (Truong & Sturm, 2005).
  
• Wages were inversely related to BMI and obesity in a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 adults – meaning, those with low wages had increased BMI as well as increased chance of being obese (Kim & Leigh, 2010)

With obesity proven to be the shackle of a specific group — low income, uneducated women and children, it is outdated to condemn the individual, to trivialize, or question the validity of obesity as a disease.

Yet, it happens, frequently and publicly. Obesity has made recent headlines in national media and the world has seen the best and the worst of  journalist puns on weight; “The Big Fat Lie,” “The Big Fat Truth,” “Fat Profits,” “Heavy Burden,” and even “F is for Fat,” — the title of an official study into obesity by the Robert Wood Johnston Foundation.

Obesity can cause obesity related cancers, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease. It is difficult to imagine any other disease so open to puns and play on words.

Is obesity, the last form of socially acceptable discrimination? Joseph Nadglowski of the President of the Obesity Action Coalition, thinks yes -

"Obesity carries with it one of the last forms of socially acceptable discrimination. We, as a society, need to make every possible effort to eradicate it from our culture.” Joseph Nadglowski, President and CEO,  Obesity Action Coalition

The Consequence of Weight Bias

In a study by Florida State University College of Medicine, researchers proved that perceived weight discrimination leads to longitudinal changes in obesity.

Published on PLOS One, “Perceived Weight Discrimination and Obesity,” researched by Angelina R. Sutin Ph.D.,  and Antonio Terracciano Ph.D studied  6157 patients over a 4 year period, tracking BMI’s and individual experiences of  perceived weight discrimination.

Participants rated  experiences of everyday discrimination in a psychosocial survey,   attributing perceived discrimination to weight, ancestry, sex, race, age, physical disability, any other aspects of their physical appearance, and/or their sexual orientation.

4,193 of the 6157 were at baseline BMI at the beginning of the study — 1,964 were clinically obese.

Of the 4,193 participants who were not obese at baseline, 357 (5.8%) became obese by follow-up, and of the 1,964 participants who were obese at baseline, 1,618 (26.3%) remained obese at follow-up.

Participants who reported experiencing a perceived weight discrimination were 2.5 times more likely to become obese, and obese participants 3 times more likely to remain obese than those who had did not report experience weight discrimination.

These effects held even when BMIs were used as  a variable to predict outcomes, and despite ethnic and other bias affecting results.

Why Weight Bias?

According to a Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity report, weight bias exists because as a society, we share a belief that individuals are responsible for their own weight and refuse to consider the environmental conditions that cause obesity. Culturally, we value thinness, and, anything that strays from the acceptable idea of body image is considered a flaw, a failure even, belonging to the individual. Negative views are further compounded by negative portrayal of obese individuals, coupled with a media obsession with the body and its appearance.

According to researchers, discrimination against obese Americans is pervasive in society. Such biased and negative attitudes are thought to lead to depression,  a negative effect on employment opportunities, salary disparities, healthcare access.

The Rudd Center found in a recent study that even mental health workers working specifically with patients with eating disorders were “not immune to weight bias.”

At its worst, discrimination against people with excess weight can lead to the very behaviors that exasperate obesity; avoiding physical exercise and binge eating, and, as the study by the Florida State University College of Medicine proves, a longitudinal weight increase.

The measure of a society has long been judged by how it treats its weakest -

"Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members — the last, the least, the littlest.” ~ Cardinal Roger Mahony, In a 1998 letter, Creating a Culture of Life

An inability for us to foster compassion for those who suffer the consequence of health and economic inequity, makes us all small.

Notes:

The Independent, Top Ten: Visual cliches

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/the-top-ten-visual-clichs-8665467.html

Foresight Report – Tackling Obesities – Future Choices (2007)

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publichealth/Healthimprovement/Obesity/DH_079713

FRAC: Relationship between Poverty and Obesity

http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-income-people-at-greater-risk-for-overweight-or-obesity/

 

Perceived Weight Discrimination

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0070048

Consequences of Obesity (FRAC)

http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/what-are-the-consequences-of-adult-overweight-and-obesity/

Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity

http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/mental-health-professionals-treating-eating-disorders-are-not-immune-to-weight-bias

Image credit: RGB Free Stock

Thanks to photographer tacluda

Doctors, Identity, Socia Media. Crisis or Kink?

credit:saavem

A new platform, a new potential – a new potential problem. Tweets, blogs, posts, “many to many” e-communications have created fears over doctors having an online voice within a public domain.
For all health professionals, social media poses an opportunity and a challenge.
Fast and free, many-to-many messages enable engagement within communities, with patients, and an opportunity to set the health record straight in a misinformed media.

This new e-voice comes at a cost. By its very nature, the internet is a disobedient arena. A cause for concern for reasons highlighted by researchers at John Hopkins University -

• messages can spread with little control
• boundaries can blur
• mini blogging misdemeanours are open to public viewing at best, public sharing at worst

Official guidelines by the American Medical Association (AMA) advise physicians to consider a double online identity; one professional and one private.

Not since the strange case of the troubled Dr Jekyll has a doctor been subject to grapple so with their identity. The 21st century physician faces a far less odious and much more common conflict; to jump in with all 10 digits as a professional doctor, or as a Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms, or not at all.

 

Identity Crisis or Kink?

John Hopkins University associate professors researched the modern day dilemma of doctors tweeting in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association; "Social Media and Physicians’ Online Identity Crisis."

The team, Mathew DeCamp MD, Thomas W. Koenig, MD and Margaret S. Chisolm concluded in favor of doctors having an online identity within their professional capacity, rebuking guidelines to manage a double persona. The reasons put forward for engaging within social media as a professional health practitioner include -

⦁ to have two separate identities online is impossible. People can connect the “professional” you with the “personal” you in a snap
⦁ the positive impact of doctors tackling misleading medical information outweighs the potential pitfalls
⦁ opting out of the online conversation is not an option. Engagement is a must.

The recommendation by the American College and Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) to have two identities is impossible according to the John Hopkins team, simply because “with minimal information, searching the web can quickly connect professional and personal content.”

Dr Jekyll was never a good advocate for doctors dabbling with more than one identity. Even in the less curious of cases, managing dual identities is hard work and according to John Hopkins’s research team, essentially ”operationally impossible.”

As any good Careers Counsellor will tell you, the professional self is an extension of the personal; a complex interplay of everything that makes us individuals with the allsorts that adds meaning to our lives.

To divide the two would be a separation “verging on the nonsensical,” researchers conclude.
People are not just their jobs. As one Doctor, dying and intending to tweet from her death bed to normalize the death process demonstrates in her Twitter biography. Not just doctor, but patient too -

"Wife, daughter, sister, aunty, friend, doctor, patient and author. Always trying to look on the bright side of life…" Wakefield · theothersidestory.co.uk @grangerkate

 

What Tweets?

Dr Katherine Chretien, an Internist at the Washington DC VA Medical Center looked into the content of doctors tweets by analyzing 260 Twitter accounts. To be included in the study, each doctor had to have at least 500 followers.

A total of 5,000 tweets were analysed. The last 20 tweets of each user sent between May 1st and May 31st were categorised by Dr Chretien’s team as either “health related”, “personal” or “inappropriate.”
Agreement was implicit in 78% of cases. Of the tweets that were classified by a tweet judge as inappropriate, consensus was sought in the team to confirm the original moderator’s suspicion of a tweet.

The results were published in JAMA. Of over 5,000 tweets -

• 49% (2543) were health or medical related
• 21% (1082) were personal communications
• 14% (703) were retweets
• 58% (2965) contained links
• Seventy-three tweets (1%) recommended a medical product or proprietary service
• 634 (12%) were self-promotional
• 31 (1%) were related to medical education

One hundred forty-four tweets (3%) were categorized as unprofessional, of which -

• Thirty-eight tweets (0.7%) represented potential patient privacy violations
• 33 (0.6%) contained profanity
• 14 (0.3%) included sexually explicit material
• 4 (0.1%) included discriminatory statements.

You can very quickly match doctors with their content, according to Dr Kathleen Chretien and her research team.

“Of the 27 users (10%) in our sample responsible for the potential privacy violations, 92% (25/27) were identifiable by full listed name on the profile, profile photograph, or full listed name on a linked Web site.” Dr Kathleen Chretien comments in the JAMA article.

 

Still, It’s Good to Tweet

The John Hopkins article however would argue perhaps that despite the 3% of tweets being classed as unprofessional, physicians active on social media object to giving up an e-voice for exactly the same reasons that others argue it should be quashed.
The article highlights that social media by it’s very nature -

> blurs boundaries
> levels hierarchies
> leads to transparency

One self confessed twitter user would agree. Lisa Rodrigues CBE, NHS Chief Executive urges senior medical staff to tweet because “it is just a new way of communicating. It’s free, it’s easy and it’s totally in your hands.” Lisa Rodrigues, NHS Executive and CEO Sussex Partnership Trust.
Lisa adds, “Social media is just another way to network. And good leaders must be great networkers. Otherwise how can we learn, keep in touch with our own people and share what we are thinking or doing to help the people we are here to serve?”

Lisa’s reasons for using Twitter include -

1. To share good news, in 140 characters and via links to my weekly blog or other things on our website
2. To talk about the difficult stuff – such as when we make mistakes, or the stigma our patients, and our staff, face on a daily basis
3. To make contact with people whose ideas or chutzpah I admire
4. To hear about and discuss new ideas
5. To encourage and motivate people – myself and others
6. To signal change or challenges such as the impact of the recession on the NHS
7. To talk about trivia (eg *The Archers) * a popular UK radio serial
8. To hone my writing skills – you would be surprised what an improvement using 140 characters can make
9. To show I’m human
10. To say what I’m thinking without anyone editing it or giving it their own spin.
My name is @LisaSaysThis and I am a Twitter addict.

Social or Asocial Media?

Regardless of our position we should all tweet with care. For a doctor to ignore the online conversation is not an option. To juggle a professional and personal online voice is up to the particular tweeter, as long as they are aware that there is no guarantee that their professional identity is concealed. Armed with a wireless connection, anyone can quickly track you to your professional persona.
The real question is why wouldn’t you tweet/blog? The internet is the 21st century information party where everyone is clambering for health information. It’s where patients are answering their health questions, rightly or wrongly. Nibble a volauvent and rely, as John Mandrola suggests on common sense to see you through, but just make sure you are there -

The bottom line is always the same. Success comes from mastery of the obvious. Common sense, decency, truth and admitting one’s mistakes will rarely steer you wrong” John Mandrola is a cardiologist who blogs at Dr John M.

Notes:John Hopkins University: Social Media and Physicians’ Online Identity Crisis
Social Media JAMA article (link)
Dr John M, Heart Rhythm, Medicine and Health
www.drjohnm.org ‎
Blog of Dr John Mandrola: Commentary on electrophysiology, atrial fibrillation, healthy living, cycling, and knowledge.
Image: RGB Freestock “saavem”
http://www.rgbstock.com/user/saavem

Patients lose trust in “scruffy” UK doctors, or do they?

credit:lusi

The visual tell tale signs of a hospital doctor – long sleeved shirt, tie and white hospital coat banned in 2005 as part of the infection control measures against the spread of MRSA and C.difficil has led to patients apparently losing trust in “scruffy” NHS doctors.

According to critics, doctors no longer look like doctors. One anonymous consultant told the Sunday Times –

"If you come to see a consultant, you will be greeted by an open-neck-shirted doctor who will look as if he is the hospital DJ, but will in fact be the consultant.”

Dress code

In a bid to reduce the spread of MRSA and C.Diffficil, the NHS introduced a dress code banning ties, long sleeves and “superfluous” clothing.

The only “safe” dress options for doctors were scrubs and open necked short-sleeved shirts. A Dickie bow tie seemingly the only item at a male doctor’s disposal to set himself apart from the hospital DJ.
At the same time as the dress ban, a host of initiatives were introduced as part of the infection control measures including;

• hand washing
• sanitizers and gloving
• linen handling
• environmental cleaning
• increased hygiene reporting

MRSA and infection control

MRSA, a “staph” germ, is the only staph strain resistant to first line antibiotics. Typically spread through physical contact, once entering the body MRSA can spread to bones, joints, the blood, the lungs, the heart, or the brain.
Serious staph infections are more common in a weakened immune system; patients most vulnerable are those in hospitalized for long durations, on kidney dialysis, cancer patients or those who have had surgery within the last year.

The Health Public Authority (HPA) now publish MRSA and C.difficile infection data for every hospital each week. Mandatory surveillance now also includes figures for MSSA (Methicillin-Sensitive Staphylococcus Aureus) and E.coli infections.

The infection control measures of 2007 have so far been successful. Instances of MRSA cited on death certificates has fallen by 77 per cent:

In 2007 – a total of 1,593 cases of MRSA were recorded on death certificates.
By 2011 – only 364 cases of MRSA were recorded on death certificates.

 

Critics

Critics of the dress code are however not convinced that the dress ban has had any proven effect. Dr Stephanie Dancer, medical microbiologist in NHS Lanarkshire and member of working groups on antibiotic prescribing, MRSA and hospital cleaning, speaking on Radio 4 to Mark Porter on Inside Health commented -

“Yes figures of MRSA – certainly we have seen figures for those plummet, but to say that is attributable to the dress code? No, I don’t think we can say that. I don’t think there’s any evidence to support that.”

Dr Dancer added that is is not the lack of doctors in ties that has reduced infection rates, it is instead the result of a “bundle” of initiatives introduced since 2007. The compulsory scrubs she claims have simply “eroded the doctors status.”

NHS “v” private hospital

Mark Porter on Radio 4′s Inside Health noted the “transformation” seen in doctors attire depending on whether they were working within a NHS or private hospital. The very same senior doctors seen working bare below the elbow for the NHS will “transform into full pin stripes” for consultation work in private hospitals. Dr Stephanie Dancer added -

If the suit is good enough for the private hospital, it’s good enough for the NHS.”

 

Will the US follow suit?

Unlikely. In the US, the American Medical Association (AMA) considered adopting a similar UK dress code in 2009. A proposal for a “no hospital coat” policy was scrapped after US doctors voiced heavily in favor of keeping their traditional hospital garb. Dr Mark Hochberg, a professor of surgery at NYU’s Langone Medical Center claimed that a physician wearing a white coat was a symbol of 20th century medicine.
The US debate was policy free, but not mirth free with many suggesting the bare option, started by “Anonymous” on the “Not Running a Hospital Blog” -

Anonymous said…

I guess, if we are going to be absolutely safe, doctors should be naked.”

Doctor’s prognosis

What do doctors think? Opinion is divided. However, Dr Jonathan Afoke, Cardiac Surgery Registrar at Leeds General Infirmary commented that his identity as a doctor had nothing to do with his dress code.

Appreciating the need for basic professional attire and a personal tendency to opt for a pressed shirt and trousers, Dr Jonathan Afoke felt that the role of being a doctor was summarized aptly within a quote from a patient –

I had all these strange people I’ve never met see me every day, but I always knew that you would sit down with me and my family every day to explain things, so you’re my doctor.”

Hippocrates set out principles 2,500 years ago for doctors to adhere to, much of which makes up the professional code of conduct for doctors today. One notably reminds the practitioner to remember that the patient is a human being –

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being”

For this, you don’t need a hospital white coat, shirt, or Dickie bow tie.




Notes:

NHS dress code recommendations
http://www.nhsprofessionals.nhs.uk/download/comms/CG1_NHSP_Standard_Infection_Control_Precautions_v3.pdf

Hospital Infection figureshttp://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2009PressReleases/090910MRSAandCDifficilecontinuetofall/

Radio 4: Inside Health
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/?q=scruffy%20doctors

Not Running a Hospital blog spot
http://runningahospital.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/tie-one-on.html


Image credit: RGB Freestock "lusi" http://www.rgbstock.com/user/lusi