{"doi":"10.1002/jhm.12971","title":"What's in a name? Laypeople's understanding of medical roles and titles","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Physicians regularly use jargon in patient communication, which can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. OBJECTIVE: To assess the general public's understanding of names and roles of medical specialties and job seniority titles. DESIGNS: Volunteer participants completed an electronic survey, filling-in-the-blanks for 14 medical specialties (e.g., \"pediatricians are doctors who take care of _____\"), and ranked physician titles in order of experience (medical student, intern, senior resident, fellow, attending). SETTING: The 2021 Minnesota State Fair. PARTICIPANTS: Volunteers >18 years old without medical or nursing training. MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURES: We summarized responses with descriptive statistics. Two researchers coded open-ended answers as correct, partially correct, or incorrect, with a third researcher for coding discrepancies. RESULTS: Two hundred and four participants completed the survey (55% female; mean age 43; 67% of respondents with a bachelor's degree or higher). Of 14 medical specialties listed on the survey, respondents most accurately identified dermatologists (94%) and cardiologists (93%). Six specialties were understood by less than half of the respondents: neonatologists (48%), pulmonologists (43%), hospitalists (31%), intensivists (29%), internists (21%), and nephrologists (20%). Twelve percent of participants correctly identified medical roles in rank order. Most participants (74%) correctly identified medical students as the least experienced. Senior residents were most often identified as the most experienced (44%), with just 27% of respondents correctly placing the attending there. We conclude that medical professionals should recognize that titles are a common source of misunderstanding among the general public and should describe their role when introducing themselves to minimize confusion.","journal":"Journal of Hospital Medicine","year":2022,"id":280264,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9531,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":471623,"name":"Corinne Praska","orcid":"0000-0002-4937-1377","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":848259,"name":"Michael B. Pitt","orcid":"0000-0002-7123-2613","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":437860,"name":"Marissa A. Hendrickson","orcid":"0000-0002-1545-0982","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":848257,"name":"Victoria Charpentier","orcid":"0000-0002-9712-3677","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":848258,"name":"Katherine Allen","orcid":"0000-0001-8481-2724","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":439849,"name":"Rachael Gotlieb","orcid":"0000-0002-5932-7054","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":731789,"name":"Scott Lunos","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":519559,"name":"Jordan Marmet","orcid":"0009-0004-2801-4444","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":848914,"name":"Emily Hause","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":13,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:28:59.341002Z","pmid":"36173137","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}