Keep the gulf between us from getting any bigger

A leading medical journal recently reported that only a quarter of doctors wear name badges, despite evidence that most patients believe their doctors should do so.

The study showed that three fourths of patients were unable to name anyone when asked to recall the name of the physician in charge of their care, causing additional frustration.

The irony is, most patients get dozens of identification tags from the moment they’re admitted. Think back to the last time you visited someone at the hospital. That person’s name was documented on everything.

Labels, wrist bands, meal trays, patient lists, clipboards, dry erase boards, doors, gowns, beds, medicine bottles, computer screens, bags of intravenous fluid, and so on.

In contrast, doctors only have their names on security badges attached to their hips, lanyards around their neck and embroidered lab coat. That’s it.

Researchers call this an asymmetry in identification. Advocates for better patient care say this is a symptom of the enormous information gulf separating patients and their doctors. And with adherence to wearing badges only around twenty five percent, many healthcare organizations have been testing new solutions to this sticky problem.

Some are rewarding good nametag behavior, like the hospital providing coffee vouchers to doctors seen wearing their badges. This is a nice idea in theory. Bribery can be an effective tool for creating behavioral change.

But employees shouldn’t be rewarded for doing something they’re supposed to be doing. That’d be like offering free cigarettes to chefs who remember to wear their aprons in the kitchen. It’s just part of the uniform. Get used to wearing the thing. It comes with the territory.

Korean doctors take more of the negative reinforcement approach. Physicians are required to wear their name tags by law. The health authorities enacted the nametag law after a string of incidents where fake doctors were found to be conducting surgeries disguised as licensed professionals.

According to the ministry of health and welfare, the name tags must display the medical worker’s name, the license, and the type of the license so that patients and guardians can identify them. Medical workers who don’t comply receive a corrective order with a fine, starting at a few hundred for the first offense, escalating in cost with each repeated incident.

Clearly, this approach is quite different from giving free coffee. Korean doctors recently criticized the law as excessive regulation. The medical union said it made physicians feel like elementary school students and was a violation of their freedom.

But since the law was enacted, only about thirty corrective orders have been issue. Proving that medical workers are abiding by the rules quite well. Maybe negative reinforcement is the way to go.

Ultimately, there is no perfect answer for how to increase nametag adherence, in the medical community or anywhere else.

My recommendation to any organization trying to solve this problem is empathy focused. When you do orientation with new team members, spent ten minutes helping them understand the bigger picture.

Nametags aren’t for you. They’re for everyone who interacts with you. Here, think back to all the incidents in your career when you chose not to wear your nametag. You didn’t want people knowing your name. You forgot to put in on. You were annoyed by attaching the damn thing each day. You disliked how it looked on your clothes. Your hair got caught in it. You were cold so you put a sweater over it. You wanted to lower the amount of complaints about your service to your employer. Or you were rebelling against the badge rules just for kicks. Notice that each of those excuses has everything to do with your ego and nothing to do with other people’s needs. Notice how few of the reasons for not wearing the tag have nothing to do with improving communication, deepening connection and increasing transparency.

Listen, if you work in any kind of customer service or patient care field, part of your job is setting aside your own issues for a moment and fulfilling someone else’s needs.

And if that means suffering the momentary vulnerability of revealing your name to another human being, then so be it.

In a world hell bent on keeping people separated from each other through their differences, perhaps the nametag is a simple way to keep the gulf between us from growing any bigger.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Why don’t you wear your nametag?