Okay I'm just tooting my own horn a little bit here. I was reading an article by Pauline Chen, the New York Times' physician columnist. She was bemoaning the worsening shortage of primary care doctors because more medical students are choosing the ROAD fields. She defined ROAD as "radiology, ophthalmology, anesthesia (my emphasis), and dermatology." Well that immediately got under my crawl. As you readers may remember, being called "anesthesia" has always been one of my pet peeves. Pauline Chen is a liver transplant surgeon; I'm sure that's how she addresses her anesthesiologists in the OR. However I felt I had to immediately correct this professional slight.
I wrote a letter in the comment section reminding Dr. Chen and the NYT editors that anesthesiology is a highly respected medical and scientific field. We are not just "anesthesia." And to my surprise, they acknowledged that I was correct (see Comment #182). They corrected the article to read "anesthesiology." Hooray! A small victory for anesthesiology and anesthesiologists everywhere. Though few people will read down to Comment #182, thousands of people will now read that article and see "anesthesiology," a medical specialty at least equal to radiology, ophthalmology, and dermatology, not just anesthesia. I done good today.
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