The physician look: Do clothes really make the doctor?

Patients want their doctors to dress professionally, yet physicians have different ideas about what that means.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Aug. 11, 2003.

Like a fireman with his gear ready for an emergency, James Kenealy, MD, kept his medical uniform nearby.

As a resident at a Philadelphia hospital in the late 1980s, he would position his clothes on hangers and chairs within reach of his bed. The tie was looped under the collar of a shirt but loosened as not to choke Dr. Kenealy when he hustled to dress.

The shirt had a few buttons unfastened, making it easy to slip on quickly after resting from work at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. While his white coat and pants usually rested on hangers, his shoes and socks waited on the floor. When called into action, Dr. Kenealy did his best Superman transformation. Minus the phone booth.

"You hopped out of bed in your skivvies, popped this on and went running down to the ER," Dr. Kenealy said. "You had to be in a tie and a white coat, regardless of the hour."

Now an otolaryngologist in Framingham, Mass., Dr. Kenealy wears much the same wardrobe to practice medicine: white coat, tie, button-down shirt and slacks. The look works for him, and it's a look his patients prefer for him as well.

In fact, despite the casual-dress craze that has overtaken many of the country's workplaces, patients prefer doctors in professional attire. The look inspires trust and projects competence, they say. A neat and clean appearance is important, too.

"There are a lot of studies out there that all seem to say the same thing: It makes a difference. People do pay attention to what a physician wears," said Lawrence J. Brandt, MD, chief of gastroenterology at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, N.Y.