Culture-relativity [LWN.net]

Culture-relativity

Posted Sep 8, 2017 12:02 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: Culture-relativity by NAR
Parent article: Finding driver bugs with DR. CHECKER

Dr is a prefix meaning "Doctor" in English too. In British English it would be usual for a medical doctor to use just use the prefix "Doctor" or "Dr" and not suffix MD, unless there was a context where everybody is a "doctor" and it was important to distinguish.

My general practitioner (the woman who examines me if I have an illness to decide if it needs treating and if so how) would usually style herself Dr Creagh not "Ms Creagh" or "Creagh MD" even though the practice she works in is on a University main campus and so lots of her patients have doctorate degrees in non-medical subjects.

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Culture-relativity

Posted Sep 8, 2017 16:50 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

MD in the British and Irish sense is an actual research doctorate and usually considered senior to a PhD. Most British medical doctors have a bachelor of medicine degree, not an MD.

Culture-relativity

Posted Sep 9, 2017 0:50 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

This is funny because here in Germany the medical doctorate (“Dr. med.”) is lightweight compared to a “real” research doctorate like the ones you would obtain in physics, chemistry, or mathematics – to a point where in international comparisons it is considered mostly equivalent to a master's degree in science.