Patients don’t know their own doctors, study suggests

Most hospital patients can’t identify their physicians, or the role they play in their care, a new survey shows. University of Chicago researchers interviewed some 2,807 adults at the school’s hospital over a 15-month period, asking them to name the doctors and describe the role they played in their health care, the New York Times reports. Three-quarters of patients couldn’t name a single doctor taking care of them—and the other quarter only got the doctor’s name right 40 per cent of the time. Maybe ignorance is bliss: those who could call one of their physicians by name were more likely to be unsatisfied with their care. The study appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The New York Times