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- <text id=92TT1214>
- <title>
- June 01, 1992: What's Up, Doc?
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- June 01, 1992 RIO:Coming Together to Save the Earth
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 27
- MISCELLANY
- What's Up, Doc?
- </hdr><body>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-