Many hospital patients are confused about whether to call their doctor “Doctor” or “Mister” (or “Miss”). Just when they start to get the hang of it, they're caught out again. Now they have physicians, dressed like surgeons, sticking a cardiac stent in them—and wanting to be called doctor. And the stent insertion is an intervention, rather than an operation, because it's not carried out by a card-carrying surgeon. In the US, of course, “Doctor” will do for every vet, dentist, osteopath, and podiatrist (Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 2006;99: 164-5).