The Nation - News from Jan. 2, 1987

Most hospital patients prefer to take their medicine with a dose of formality and would rather not rely on a doctor wearing blue jeans, a hospital survey showed. A survey of patients at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and at H. C. Moffitt Hospital at the University of California at San Francisco found that patients like their doctors to dress “somewhat formally.” Sixty-five percent of the patients polled believe doctors on duty should wear white coats, according to the survey reported in today’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.