"Constantly being addressed and referred to by my first name"

This has become more and more of a problem over the last few years: health and care staff now routinely take it upon themselves to address and refer to all patients by their first names, regardless of the patients' wishes.

I have been told that young people like and expect this and wouldn't wish to be addressed in any other way, but to people of my generation and older this is appallingly rude: so rude, in fact, that there is no polite way to ask somebody not to do it. A person who wants to be called Chris can easily say - Call me Chris, but it's very difficult to say - Call me Ms/Mr Smith, and it's a worry that a health worker that you depend on might be offended (and sometimes it's been made clear to me that they are); so it looks to health and care staff as though we don't mind, and apparently this is something not covered in Diversity and Inclusion training.

It's hard to explain the consequences of this. We were brought up always to call an adult by title and surname unless invited otherwise, and when we ourselves were eventually so addressed, it was a sign we were recognised as adults.

Our family and friends used our first names, and though while we were young, bosses or college lecturers might from a position of seniority take it upon themselves to do so, other people who respected us as adults used title and surname. So when health or care staff - people we depend on - call us by our first names, it's reducing us to child status again, or declaring that they are our superiors and it's their decision what we are to be called.

I feel it's demeaning, humiliating, infantilising, and even if they stop doing it, we still know that that's how they're thinking of us.  It's also a violation. A first name is a sign of intimacy, to be freely given, but when we fill in official forms we have no choice; to take that compulsorily given name and use it without invitation is to force intimacy on us - which is exacerbated by the way health and care staff so often feel entitled to pat, stroke or hug us uninvited.

A health or care situation is often one where we are obliged to expose our bodies, our emotions, our homes and/or our most intimate private lives to strangers, so to be deprived of the dignity of respectful address in these situations can be extremely distressing.

It would be so simple for it to be standard practice that health and care services always ask, right at the start and in a genuinely neutral manner (not - You don't mind if I call you Chris, do you?) what a patient or service user wants to be called, for that to be recorded prominently in their notes and to be adhered to by everyone who deals with them.

Most health and care organisations make a point of how they respect their users' dignity, and how aware they are of their diversity and the need for inclusion, but this is something that affects huge numbers of especially older people and it's completely ignored. 

Most staff seem to be totally unaware of it as an issue, and yet nearly everybody I know of my own generation or older says (a) how much they hate it and (b) that they don't feel able to say so.

Please can something be done about it? It would be such a simple change that would make being looked after a more pleasant and less stressful experience for our generation.