NURSES TOLD TO RESPECT THE ELDERLY
Hospital staff are being urged to stop addressing patients by their first names.
The head of the British Medical Association said that too many nurses and doctors were making elderly patients feel uncomfortable by using first names, when many preferred to be addressed more formally.
Dr Hamish Meldrum said: "I have noticed it especially in residential homes, where you will get a wee young girl addressing a man of 90 by his first name, not realising that he is clearly uncomfortable with that."
The BMA chairman, who is a GP, urged every doctor and nurse to ask patients how they liked to be addressed.
(Telegraph)
A reader, Don Mudd, wrote: My wife cured a doctor of using her first name. He asked: "How are you feeling Margaret?" She looked at his name tag and replied "Not too bad, David". On his next visit he said: "How are you feeling Mrs Mudd?"
It also reminds me of my twin-brother (an ex-military man) who, when in hospital, was asked by a young nurse whether she could call him 'Trevor'. "Certainly not", he replied, "You will call me Sir"!
LissaT
Pro 
My beef is much less about the formality of Mr., Mrs. or Miss as opposed to using the first name, as the matter of preferred name. By my reckoning around 50% of people use a name other than the one which appears first on their birth certificate - probably more if you count the standard first syllable diminutives. I know one family in which the eldest son in each generation is named George, but for the last four generations each used (and is still using) his middle name (although the one landed with George Denzil prefers Fred - and who can blame him?). My uncle Arthur Francis is known as Peter, and my mother Evadne Mary was always known as Mary. Then there are the non-standard diminutives, and the nick-names.
Now I am not suggesting that in normal circumstances nurses should use thes informal names, but they should be recorded as a semi-conscious patient is much more likely to respond to the customary name, and those nurses who insist on informality should at least have the courtesy to use the right informal name.