Top Surgeons Better at Parking Than Other Docs?
Phantom vibrations, parking docs and more among holiday offerings from BMJ.
Jan. 1, 2010— -- Two late additions to BMJ's annual Christmas series of offbeat research articles offered novel perspectives on physicians' parking lot behaviors and the mysteries of "phantom vibration syndrome."
As a BMJ press official explained earlier, its end-of-year articles represent "real" research, submitted through normal channels and subjected to peer review, but the topics are ... unusual.
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I Could Swear My Phone Went Off
Have you ever had the sensation that the cell phone in your pocket was vibrating when it wasn't? Well, 68 percent of the medical staff at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., said they have had such a sensation.
What's more, according to Baystate's Dr. Michael B. Rothberg and colleagues, their survey of 169 workers indicated that deactivating the vibrate mode on their phones was the most effective way to stop the vibrations that weren't actually there.
Nearly 40 percent of those reporting phantom vibrations did nothing about them. But the rest apparently found them bothersome enough to warrant action, and most of them said those actions succeeded.
Turning off the vibrate mode worked for 75 percent of those who tried it, compared with 63 percent of those who moved the device to a different pocket and half of those who got new phones (and yes, Rothberg and colleagues calculated a P value: 0.217).
The "researchers" also found that the strongest predictive factor for phantom vibration was carrying it in a breast pocket versus on a belt (prevalence ratio 1.66, 95 percent CI 1.29 to 2.14).
Surgeons: Models of Efficiency Behind the Wheel
In a study likely to surprise absolutely no one, senior surgeons in Belfast, Northern Ireland, were significantly more efficient in parking their cars in a hospital lot than anesthesiologists, radiologists, or general medical practitioners.
Led by trainee R. Scott McCain at Ulster Hospital, a group conducted a "covert observational study" in which they spied on more than 100 senior doctors as they drove into the gated hospital lot.
Data points included whether drivers had their access cards ready in hand as they approached the barrier, and the time it took to park the car, get out, and walk to the hospital door.
The 32 surgeons had the highest rates of card-readiness and turned in the quickest median times for the parking process -- as shown by copiously reported interquartile ranges and other measures that would be tedious to repeat here. (Full versions of all BMJ Christmas papers are available freely at the journal's website.)
McCain and colleagues suggested that parking lot behaviors of trainees could shed light on the specialties for which they may be best suited.
"As an aptitude test blinded to participants, the 'barrier method' assessed by COPS [covert observation of parking skills] has shown potential to provide a validated method of career selection within medicine," they wrote.