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Time - Man of the Year
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06019925.000
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1992-10-19
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THE WEEK, Page 27MISCELLANYWhat's Up, Doc?
Patients like to believe that doctors are at least passingly
familiar with the medical texts that line their offices. Not so,
says a report in last week's New England Journal of Medicine. A
study of the reading habits of second-year medical students at
the University of Southern California found that most coped with
22,000 pages of required and recommended reading by ignoring the
bulk of it.
According to Dr. Clive Taylor, the reading time expected
of a U.S.C. medical student is roughly 71 hours a week. Actual
reading time is closer to six hours. Though one diligent
student in the survey did spend 15 hours a week hitting the
books, four confessed to having done no reading whatsoever.
Taylor is sympathetic to the students. The problem, he
says, is not ill-prepared doctors but professors trying to cram
an explosion of medical knowledge into a fixed four-year
program of study. His prescription: "If we add anything further
to the medical curriculum, let it be spare time."