Heroes Not Zombies

A study published in The Archives of Internal Medicine looked at how doctors greet their patients. In particular they studied how often doctors used the patient’s name and how often they greeted the patient with a handshake. They claimed to show that most patients wanted to be greeted by name and with a handshake and that many times doctors failed to use the patient’s name. However, the statistics on the handshaking are fascinating –

Seventy-eight percent of patients surveyed wanted a doctor to shake their hands, while 18 percent did not. In the taped sessions, doctors and patients shook hands 83 percent of the time.

Read that carefully. 78% of patients said they wanted the doctor to shake their hands. 83% of time the doctor shook the patients hand. What does this mean? That doctors are shaking patients’ hands too readily? That more patients get their hands shaken than wish to do so? Funnily enough, there’s no comment about this strange anomaly.