Why are waiting room magazines so awful? Doctor's study reveals the answer
You're at the doctor's office. You're waiting, of course. Your phone battery is dead. So you look around for a magazine. And all you can find are back issues of U.S. News and World Report. Which stopped publishing its print edition in 2010. You ask yourself: "Are doctors sadists?" Nope, that's not it....
You're at the doctor's office. You're waiting, of course. Your phone battery is dead. So you look around for a magazine. And all you can find are back issues of U.S. News and World Report. Which stopped publishing its print edition in 2010. You ask yourself: "Are doctors sadists?" Nope, that's not it.
His finding? That new, "gossipy" magazines -- ones with five or more people on the cover -- disappear quickly from the waiting room. That leaves behind the outdated and the serious. Not one issue of Time or The Economist went missing.
Dr. Arroll says he's not willing to draw definite conclusions about what happened to the magazines until he gets funding for further study.
"We can't prove that they were taken," he tells Carol. "The Australians did a study on disappearing spoons and they postulated cosmic factors."
He agreed that it was possible the magazines developed legs and walked out on their own.
"We're open to all research hypotheses," he said. "Patients are a possibility, of course."
He concludes that, as a cost-saving measure, doctors should stock only Time and The Economist.
"But our methods advisory design team -- the receptionists -- refused to do that because they were afraid of a waiting room riot."