Patients quick to steal gossip from surgeries

Illustration / Peter Bromhead

Ever wondered why magazines in your doctor's waiting room are well-thumbed and boring? Your fellow patients have been stealing the new gossip mags.

Bruce Arroll, a GP and Auckland Medical School professor, headed a study to answer the "burning research question" after growing fed up with complaints about the outdated selection of magazines.

He put 87 magazines in a waiting room, featuring a mix of new and old factual and gossip titles.

Within a month almost half had disappeared - and only one gossip mag remained. Those left behind were more serious and without pictures of celebrities on the cover.

The study has been published in the British Medical Journal as part of its Christmas special featuring entertaining and quirky studies.

Arroll wrote that the study ended before all the gossip magazines had vanished for "fear of a waiting room riot".

He said the study was based on "good science" but was a chance for him, PhD candidate Stowe Alrutz and statistician Simon Moyes to feature in the journal.

"It's extremely difficult to get an article in [the BMJ]. For most researchers it's the pinnacle of their career."

Arroll, who works in South Auckland and is head of general practice and primary healthcare at Auckland University, said the study was funded through family and friends donating magazines.

He used his own money to buy new magazines. In the study Arroll said: "Quantification of this phenomenon was urgently needed. Practices should consider using old copies of the Economist or Time magazine as a first step towards saving costs."