Over at Wachter’s World, Bob Wachter, M.D., Associate Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco  relates what it’s like to be on a plane and hear the airplane’s PA system ask: “If there’s a doctor on board, please ring your call button!”

Wachter has been answering this request for some twenty years and offers a surprisingly candid, wonderfully funny, and ultimately reassuring description of how he has responded. Physicians are trained to be professionals, and most put patients’ interests first.