All of us who see patients have to call them somehow, and most will have long since given up on asking how they prefer it. We distributed 151 questionnaires among patients of our small, urban, deprived surgery. Most of them (85.4%) preferred first names. This did not vary with age, but our sample was too uniformly white and poor to comment on social class or ethnicity. Doctors seem unlikely to cause offence by using first names.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2004.
