Hi, I have been considering dreading my hair for quite some time now. However, I have a few reservations. First, I’ve heard about hair loss due to dreadlocks and I was wondering how likely it is to happen, and whether it is based on how long the person has dreads. I’m thinking I’d probably have them for 2-3 years. Second, I’ve been waiting to dread my hair because I applied to medical school and wanted to avoid any unnecessary judgments during interviews based on my appearance. Now I am starting medical school in the fall and would like to dread my hair, but I am worried that it may negatively impact my professors’, classmates’, or patients’ opinions of my abilities as a student and future physician. As a doctor yourself, would you consider having dreadlocks to be a bad idea during medical school? If I do dread my hair, I plan to get rid of them prior to interviewing for residencies. I considered waiting until I begin my residency or even finish it, but by then I will be nearly (if not over) 30 and at that point I feel I will have outgrown it. Any thoughts, opinions or advice you have would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!
Creating dreadlocks is a personal choice. With that said, as a doctor I always ask if what I do could impact a patient’s confidence in me, so I would not make such a personal choice (of course, this is just my personal opinion). My practice is an elective cosmetic surgery practice and if I had dreadlocks, I believe that many potential patients would not select me as their surgeon, simply because of prejudices that they may carry. Taking it one step further… let’s say that you are a surgeon that needs to perform a life-saving procedure and the patient has two choices — you with dreads or another doctor with a more “standard” hair style. Do you think that will impact the patient’s confidence in you? Or let’s say that you have to break bad news to a patient who has cancer. Will that patient accept your opinion or ask for another? It goes on and on…
The confidence of a patient is about judging the book by its cover at times. Are we far enough along to ignore the cover of all the books out there? I’ve never had dreads, as you might’ve expected, so I’d love to hear from readers with dreadlocks to see if they’ve impacted the way people perceive you.
Tags: dreadlocks, dreads, doctor, surgeon, surgery, medical school, medical, hair style, opinion