Doctor's Attire

To decipher the behaviour codes of medical doctors at work is a Herculean task – so daunting that I was impressed when I read the blog of my mentor, who recently talked about wearing tie by medical doctors (http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2008/01/tie.html).

"Isn't it time to write about wearing white coats by doctors?" I talked to myself. Around two years ago, I read from the medical journal that patients and visitors to an internal medicine clinic overwhelmingly favor professional attire with white coats for physicians. Now that the doctor’s creditability is often at stake in the wake of stories in the newspaper, ahem, isn’t this very icon of trust-enhancing white coat attractive? And presto, almost before I realized what I was doing, I found myself for the first time over the last ten years keen to don the great white symbol every time I went to work. It is not a tool to show off the superiority of doctors in front of everyone, and neither is it destined to put our patients’ blood pressure up. Just like the neat, wrinkle-free Boy Scout uniform, the doctor’s white coat represents the spirit of comradeship and serves as a reminder of our discipline or professionalism. Pretty neat, huh? While I pay little attention to my tie, I have never failed to wash and press my white coat every week - as how a Boy Scout would live up to his dictum to keep his uniform laundered and ironed even on the busiest days.

Yet as intuitively appealing as this contention might be, the flip side of the story is that doctors might be fooled into the obsession with mere appearance – instead of concentrating on the scalpel or medical knowledge. Likewise, simply wearing a red towel around the neck and the tights with a trademark "S" will never make us become Superman. And, of course, the white coat nowadays should never be worn for the original purpose of preventing cross contamination, as what it was thought to do back in the 19th century.

So, where does that leave us? Ask yourself this: if a navy personnel or Boy Scout needs to wear uniform with razor-sharp crease, why shouldn't doctors dress in tidy and neat white coats? White coat alone is not meant to be the open seasame to medical doctor. No, it isn't. Still, the very simple act of wearing (or ironing) a clean and unwrinkled white coat, at any rate, will do more good than harm, at least by galvanizing our efforts to pay more attention to our manners and etiquette.