One session with MD radio-logist Lara Hazelton will determine your basic radio personality type. Oh, and doctor, please stop punching the air with your fists

I do a lot of driving for work: seeing patients in nursing homes, travelling to rural areas for clinics, getting lost, going to meetings, getting lost and so on. It can be lonely with no one to talk to but my imaginary friends and myself.

For a while I was listening to books on tape. Most of these were the cheap remaindered lots sold at discount stores, so the variety was limited to horror novels and romance novels of a moderately explicit nature. Once, I started the car with a nurse sitting beside me and the tape came on halfway through a hot and heavy sex scene. She wouldn’t ride in the car with me for months after that.

Unfortunately, my days of listening to books on tape came to an end when my husband bought me a CD player for my car. It was a great gift but, unfortunately, the salesman didn’t have CD players that also played tapes. In fact, he insinuated that perhaps I was a bit of a dinosaur for clinging to outdated things because they were familiar. Kind of like what the residents think of my prescribing practices.

It’s a lot more difficult to find remaindered books on CD, so I have started listening to the radio again. There are a lot of radio stations out there and it has been challenging to find one that suits my tastes. I have concluded there are basic radio personality styles and the trick is to figure out which one you belong to. Not wanting others to go through the same struggle I faced, I have designed the following test. I showed it to a psychologist I work with, wondering whether she would like to help me develop and market it, but she said something confusing about reliability and validity, which I took as a “no.” Hopefully this will help others in need:

1. When in your car, do you:

a. Drive at a leisurely pace and enjoy the scenery

b. Drive slowly and aggravate other drivers

c. Drive erratically, punch the air with your fist, and bang your head on the steering wheel

d. Text message your friends

e. Text message your office to tell your secretary you’re on your way

2. Who would you most like to have dinner with?

a. Beethoven

b. Lawrence Welk

c. Eddie Van Halen

d. Beyoncé

e. Your family, whom you haven’t eaten with in three months

3. Your idea of fun is:

a. A night at the symphony

b. Bingo

c. Whipping down the highway on your Harley Davidson

d. A makeover

e. A night off-call

4. Your favourite reading material is:

a. The Times Literary Supplement

b. Books about the Second World War

c. Car magazines

d. E-mail from your BFF

e. EKG strips

5. If you were a medication, you would be:

a. A multivitamin

b. A laxative

c. Dextroamphetamine

d. Medical marijuana

e. A strong placebo

6. On evenings and weekends, your dress code is:

a. Dress pants and a casual blazer

b. Polyester pants and sensible shoes

c. Leather and denim

d. Spandex and heavy makeup(both sexes)

e. A white coat and stethoscope

7. Your theme song is:

a. Symphony Number 2 by Gustav Mahler

b. Love Letters in the Sand by Pat Boone

c. Back in Black by AC/DC

d. Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake

e. That music the hospital switchboard plays when they put you on hold

8. You spend most of your time with:

a. Cultured and educated friends

b. Fellow bridge aficionados

c. Your bike

d. Your esthetician

e. Fifty-year-old men with COPD

Now, determine which letter you chose the most frequently and match it to your radio personality type:

A. The classicist. Given your taste and sophistication, it’s surprising that you went to medical school with the rest of us illiterates. You gravitate toward radio stations whose announcers have vaguely British accents and whose play list was the Top 40 of 1877, but try to mix it up once in a while with stations that play music with lyrics in English, not Latin.

B. The traditionalist. There are stations that cater to those who like their music to sound like it came out of an elevator. You should try some newer music to help you relate to younger patients, say, those under the age of 85.

C. The rocker. You’re the original shock doc with a tattoo on your bicep, but you’re not 18 anymore. Take a break from your midlife crisis and mix in some mellower tunes with the head-banging.

D. The trendsetter. Unless you were a child prodigy when you started medical school, you are too old to be hip. Ask yourself if it suits the dignity of your profession to have a pierced navel, then switch the station to something more grown up.

E. The overworked physician. The last thing you heard with a beat you could dance to was the Doppler exam of a fetal heart. The telephone and the pager are the soundtrack to your life. Take some time for yourself or the next music you hear will be the auditory hallucinations of your psychotic break.

To paraphrase Les Nessman from my favourite radio station of all time, “Good day, and may the good music be yours.”

Lara Hazelton is a psychiatrist in Halifax.