Elsevier

The Lancet

Volume 348, Issue 9043, 21–28 December 1996, Pages 1692-1694
The Lancet

Articles
Survey of Norwegian doctors' cultural activities

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(96)06459-8Get rights and content

Summary

Background

During the past few decades the need for humanities in medical education has been increasingly emphasised. We sought to find out how doctors meet their cultural needs during their spare time, in comparison with other university graduates. We also aimed, in this Norwegian survey, to analyse differences between doctors according to various professional characteristics.

Methods

1041 Norwegian doctors (71% of those approached) reported their cultural activities through a postal survey. Their replies were compared with those of 224 university graduates who had taken part in a similar survey by Statistics Norway in 1991.

Findings

The doctors spent less time than the other graduates on reading newspapers and watching television, though they were more musically active and 18% play at least one instrument regularly. No other differences were apparent. The more time doctors spent on medical reading, the more time they also devoted to non-medical reading. No systematic differences in cultural activity according to medical specialty were found, but women were more culturally active than men.

Interpretation

The high work-load and demands of medical practice do not limit doctors' cultural life. Spare-time cultural activities among doctors seem to be determined more by personal than by professional characteristics.

Introduction

The Greek god of medicine, Asclepios, was the son of Apollo, the god of art, music, and literature. Modern medicine pays little attention to this traditional association between medicine and the humanities. Success is based on the continuously increasing explanatory power of natural science and technology.

During the past few decades, however, the need for humanities in medical education, both undergraduate and postgraduate, has been repeatedly emphasised.1, 2 According to the proponents of this idea, to help patients effectively, a doctor must be able not only to explain observations but also to understand the patient's primary world of meanings.

Literature and medicine has, since 1972, been part of the curriculum in some medical schools in the USA, and a 1994 survey suggested that a third of medical schools in the USA taught literature to their students.3 The integration of humanities into medical training has been described and advocated in several articles in.4, 5, 6 In most medical schools and postgraduate training programmes, however, humanities are still viewed as superfluous activities, and doctors must meet their cultural needs in their spare time. On average doctors work longer hours and have less spare time than the rest of the population. In Norway, for example, doctors' working hours exceed those of the average employee by 40% and those of the average university graduate by 25%.7 Rothman8 reported that doctors have few hobbies and a narrow range of interest, and that they spend little time on cultural activities. A widespread belief is that the more doctors become engaged in medical life, the less time they devote to cultural activities. Our own experience suggests, however, that many doctors can manage both a professional career and other activities.

We aimed to compare the cultural activities of doctors with those of other university graduates (in Norway) and to analyse differences in cultural activities according to professional characteristics and activity.

Section snippets

Methods

The study is part of a comprehensive research programme on the health and welfare of doctors in Norway. It was based on a crosssectional postal survey of members of the Norwegian Medical Association (more than 94% of all Norwegian doctors). The survey was based on 15 extensive questionnaires, and to ensure an adequate response rate without exhausting the respondents, an overlapping questionnaire design was developed.9 Each doctor received one basic questionnaire and a random sample of three

Questionnaire findings

1041 (71%) of the 1476 doctors approached completed the cultural questionnaire—306 women and 734 men (one respondent did not specify sex). The average age was 39·1 years for the women and 43·8 years for the men. Time spent reading non-medical books (min during previous 24 h) 40 30 20 10 153 (15%) respondents were family physicians, 145 (14%) surgical specialists (including anaesthetists, gynaecologists, and otorhinolaryngologists), 143 (14%) 1234 56 ? 7 medical specialists, 73 (7%)

Discussion

The cultural activities defined in this study may seem a heterogeneous group of pursuits. Even though a horror film differs greatly from a symphony, they both contribute to people's cultural input, and the time devoted to various activities reflects a person's priorities. Much less initiative is needed to watch television at home (which we did not include in our cultural index) than to go out to a concert, film, or play.

We found that doctors are interested in the arts and humanities, and that

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