After recently catching up on reading my blogs, a friend commented that doctors must have found me intimidating. That got me thinking. Was I? Certainly not deliberately. But perhaps there’s an inherent element of intimidation when I arrive with notes in hand. It’s quite possible they feel I’m challenging their authority.
Who is the authority?
An authority is someone who’s an expert on a subject. Merriam-Webster defines being an expert as having special skill or knowledge because of what you’ve been taught or have experienced. We live in a culture where people gain the status of expert through years of specialized training. This is particularly obvious in medicine, where doctors have been through a dozen years of post-secondary education to qualify to practise.
