On the lighter side: Medicine or etiquette? Rethinking a lecturer’s teaching assignment

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To investigate the extent to which medical students demonstrate politeness. With respect to patient–physician interactions, politeness appears to be a factor in therapeutic success, perhaps because it might induce greater patient compliance.

Method: We assessed 354 third–semester medical students on one type of politeness, that is the percentage of students who greeted the teacher upon entering the lecture room.

Results: Overall, 47% of the students initiated a greeting and this percentage did not change when the lecturers wore white coats. Females were less likely to initiate a greeting (35%) than males (55%).

Conclusion: The results lead us to question whether university lecturers should strictly stick to their content of the curriculum or should they also teach their students about etiquette related to good clinician–patient relationships?

KEYWORDS:

• Greeting behavior
• medical etiquette
• medical students
• patient–physician interactions

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank S. Sailer and J. Wenninger for their assistance in data collection.

Declaration of interest

The study complies with the ethical standards of the local Institutional Review Board and the principles of Good Scientific Practice. The authors report no conflicts of interest and they are solely responsible for the content and writing of this paper.