Doctor Curmudgeon®: Doctors…Yes! Providers…NO!

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By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP

I am beginning to hate many words beginning with “P”. This may become my least favorite letter of the alphabet.
Among the exceptions to Doctor Curmudgeon’s new P hate list are Physician and Parfait (preferably chocolate)
Just look at these:
P – Pimple
P-Provocateur
P-Parsimonious (when it’s stingy, not frugal)
P-Plagiarize
P- PROVIDER

Let us just focus on Provider.

I did not receive a degree in Providing. A provider is someone who makes things available, or makes arrangements or supports…or stuff like that.

I am proud to have earned an M.D. Doctor of Medicine.

Others are equally proud to have earned a D.O. Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.

And so we are Doctors. We are Physicians. We are M.Ds and D.Os. We are not Providers.

We know that calling us providers is a way of lumping us with other wannabees and noctors…making us all the same. Just a bunch of providers.
I have my own little private insurgency going.

When I am on the phone calling in a prescription and, if asked for the “provider’s name,” I say, loudly and clearly, “I am NOT a provider. I am a physician. I am Doctor Curmudgeon®.”

When some stupid form (by definition, all forms are stupid, to me) asks for the provider’s signature, I cross it out and write “physician” or “doctor,” depending on my mood.
I am a physician and a curmudgeon.

I am Doctor Curmudgeon®. Do not call me Provider Curmudgeon. Or you will find yourself suffering the wrath of a chocolate-eating physician. And it is not a pretty thing to see.

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”

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