But not as many as a patient.
Doctors are trained to notice things about their patients, and even the type of hat they wear can say a lot about them.
Welcome to Professor Candid’s handy head-gear guide.
1. Baseball cap
The baseball cap is ubiquitous and if you think it can’t offer any diagnostic clues you’d be wrong. When worn backwards the cap clearly says, I’m here for my dexamfetamine and a chlamydia test, but if your patient perches it on their head side-ways you really should think carefully about what you say next.
2. Hand knitted alpaca hat with ear flaps
She’s only twenty-eight and it’s not even cold outside but she’s chosen to wear a hand knitted alpaca hat with ear flaps and so has Pixie, her four-year-old daughter. You know you’re going to be having two very different conversations during the consultation. You’re going to be talking about Panadol and she’s going to be talking about microdosing psilocybin in Bali.
3. Beret
You may as well torch your medical degree! There’s not a cat in hell’s chance you’re going to know as much medicine as someone who wears a beret, has a degree in poems and gets all their health info from the Paris Review.
“Have you read this weeks issue of Texte Zur Kunst?”
“Sorry, did you say something about a Kunst?”
4. Aussie bush hat
Made from freshly killed ball-sack, this hat tells you the wearer wouldn’t call you if he’d been scalped by a roll of barbed wire. He’s hard core, practically invincible, wrestles crocodiles before breakfast and definitely does not want his blood pressure checked by you, thank you very much!
5. Top Hat
It’s hardly every seen in public nowadays, but if you do spot a top hat in the waiting room, soaring above its competitors, I would save yourself some time and get straight on to the mental health triage line.
