“Please don’t call me Mister”: patient preferences of how they are addressed and their knowledge of their treating medical team in an Australian hospital

Objectives: To investigate how patients prefer to be addressed by healthcare providers and to assess their knowledge of their attending medical team's identity in an Australian Hospital. Setting: Single-centre, large tertiary hospital in Australia. Participants: 300 inpatients were included in the survey. Patients were selected in a sequential, systematic and whole-ward manner. Participants were excluded with significant cognitive impairment, non-English speaking, under the age of 18 years or were too acutely unwell to participate. The sample demographic was predominately an older population of Anglo-Saxon background. Primary and secondary outcome measures: Patients preferred mode of address from healthcare providers including first name, title and second name, abbreviated first name or another name. Whether patients disliked formal address of title and second name. Secondarily, patient knowledge of their attending medical team members name and role and if correct, what position within ...