For
William of Wykeham, the 14th Century Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor
of England, the proverb ‘Manners Maketh Man’ became his motto. Later, in the
early 15th Century, another proverb developed to the effect of
‘Clothes make the man’. Moving forward to the 20th Century, the
English novelist, Angela Carter, writing in Nothing
Sacred (1982), said ‘Clothes are our weapons, our challenges, our visible
insults’.
What
then, would any of the subscribers to these historic notions make of the
appearance of many of our professional men and women in the 21st
Century? In particular, what does the dress of today’s doctors say about them
and their attitudes to life, medicine and their patients?
Here,
I must declare not only an interest, but a strong prejudice which, to those who
know me, hopefully speaks for itself. Archaic notion though it may be, I subscribe
to the idea that appearances matter. The 18th Century provides us
with another proverb to illustrate the case: ‘First impressions are the most
lasting’, the saying goes.
As
a younger person, a doctor for me (and I speak of male doctors in the main
here), was somebody who at the very least wore a jacket and tie. Suits were
once de rigeuer for daytime wear for hospital
consultants and Harley Street GPs; with tweed suits and jackets the domain of
particularly the rural GP. Evenings and weekends on call required, at the very
least, that other scarce item in today’s young man’s wardrobe, a sports jacket.
However,
my view is rapidly becoming an anachronistic one. Hospital doctors have
witnessed their crisp white coats resigned to the recycling bin, as uninformed
policies have blamed long sleeves for hospital-acquired infections, and ‘bare
below the elbows’ has been become the enforced rule. Ties now dare not show
their face in the hospital clinical setting, as though these and cuffed shirts
were the enemy rather than the failure by administrators to ensure that their
hospitals were regularly cleaned, and staff
remembered the simple expedient of washing their hands between patients.
So,
how do you see your GP? Does it matter to you that he or she is in faded jeans,
a slogan-bearing tea-shirt and training shoes; with straggling hair and, for
the men at least, a couple of days growth on their chins? With allowances made
for cultural differences (though the fact that such consideration should change
our perception is witness to our fickleness), does it matter that your male
doctor has a studded nose and ears, your doctor of either sex sports a lip
ring, or medics of either sexes are happy to bare their strange and often
indecipherable tattoos?
Laying
my cards on the table, I think that it does matter. Standards of dress are
slipping and, in my view, with that landslide of slippage goes a major chunk of
professionalism. Doctors need to inspire confidence; wining the patient across
at the very start is a major step towards assisting them with their complaint.
The way a doctor dresses says a lot about their standards, attitudes and, in
turn, how thy might apply those same principles to the care of their patient.
The
early 20th Century proverb states that ‘you can’t judge a book by
its cover’. However, next time you are confronted by a scruffy looking doctor,
you might wish to remind them that style does matter, and patients shouldn’t be
made to feel insulted by the appearance of their physician. After all, if book
covers really don’t matter, would publishing houses spend so much time, effort
and money making them look so good?
(First
published in the Scunthorpe Telegraph,
Thursday 26th July 2012)
No comments:
Post a Comment