Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Cultural Studies

Daisy the Doctor, Dr Dose, Dr Grizzly, Dr Amelia Bedelia, and colleagues

BMJ 2006; 333 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.333.7582.1330 (Published 21 December 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;333:1330

Rapid Response:

Doctors as Monsters

Dear editor,--

The article by Monica Lalanda and Juan Antonio1 made for interesting
reading, especially the light-hearted manner in which it treated this
serious and important issue. We do agree that children's perceptions of
doctors are likely to be influenced at an early age by popular culture,
including story books of the kind examined by the authors.

From our perspective as doctors from ethnic minorities, we notice
with interest that the majority of the human doctors are depicted as
white. Such depiction may produce unwelcome elements of surprise when a
child sees a doctor of a different colour in real life. It may also serve
merely to buttress a misconceived notion amongst ethnic minority children
about the exclusivity of a medical career to a specific race.

In Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the story book image of doctors
(esp. white coats and frightening headlamps) is exactly what we do not
want to portray when children come for assessment. Up-to-date, culturally
sensitive storybook portrayal of doctors is needed to reflect the current
climate.

One of us2 is a trainee paediatrician born and brought up in southern
India and other one3 is a trainee psychiatrist brought up in Nigeria. To
the best of our knowledge, there are no similar picture books about
doctors in either southern India or western Nigeria. Parents depict
doctors as someone to be feared. Children are taught to do as they are
told under the threat of a “needle stick from the (monstrous) doctor”.

We believe that the kind of literature (patient friendly "ever
smiling doctors") examined by the authors would be of use in our countries
of origin.

1 Cultural studies: Monica Lalanda and Juan Antonio Alonso
Daisy the Doctor, Dr Dose, Dr Grizzly, Dr Amelia Bedelia, and colleagues
BMJ 2006; 333: 1330-1332 [Full text] ---

2 Dr Sivaraman, Paediatric SHO, Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS
Trust. ---

3Dr A Sikuade, Psychiatric SHO, Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS
Trust.

Competing interests:
None declared

Competing interests: No competing interests

02 January 2007
Baskaran Sivaraman
SHO-Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Dr A Sikuade, Psychiatric SHO, Birmingham Children’s Hospital NHS Trust.
Birmingham Children's Hospital NHS Trust