Monday, April 1, 2019

You don't know jack

NOTE: the following is NOT an April Fool's Day joke.

I'd like to thank the Science Marches On Department for sending me a truly remarkable piece of research.

Scheduling in a medical clinic requires talent, skill, and magic. There's only so much time in a day, and a lot of patients who need to be seen. People often portray the front-desk wizards as brainless, but they're far from it. Mary, after 14 years, knows me and my patients. From a few seconds on the phone she can get a good idea of how much time any particular patient will need, how that meshes in with the rest of my schedule, and (based on history) how long I am with any given return.

She also has to figure in how long it take takes me to grab a Diet Coke and drain a previous one between visits.

Any practice faces this issue, so obviously some research goes into improving work flow.

A study out of Miami, Florida recently looked into this important subject to calculate times needed for appointments at a fertility clinic.

Specifically, how long it took for a guy to, uh, shake hands with the milkman.

Yes, they wanted to know. That.

In the study guys were given a donation cup and unnamed porn mag. A stopwatch was started at the time they entered the room. They then took matters into their own hands, and texted "done" to the stopwatch person after the research project had climaxed.

For privacy, the exam room had a curtain. Boy, that's a relief.

Admittedly, it sure beats the idea of having a burly orderly with a timer in there, watching you box the one-eyed champ, but still.

The study makes no mention if the guys were allowed to wash their hands before picking up their phones to text the desk afterwards.

This graph is, by far, the best part of the article. It shows how long a guy takes to let it fly while pumping gas vs. the number of patients seen that day.


Note the blue bars: some guys actually had their ladies in the room during the process, although, under the fertility protocols, they weren't allowed to have physical contact. So the bottom line is that, if someone is watching you polish the banister, it will take longer to finish the job. In fact, the ONLY guy in the study who was unable to successfully finish marching the penguin was one who had his girlfriend in there.

Who could have seen that coming?

You can read the study itself here. It has pictures of the exam room, and a porn mag with a brown paper cover on it.

Thank you SMOD!


14 comments:

Officer Cynical said...

1. Thankfully, the "collection room" wasn't photographed under UV light.

2. What happens when you accidentally text your boss or your mom when you're done?

Nurse Lilly said...

At the end it says "The authors acknowledge Teodoro Aballa, M.S., for his valuable technical contributions."

I... don't think I want to know.

bobbie said...

LMAO! At least I learned some new terms from this...
Thanks for the great big giggle!

Ami said...

Ordinarily when I read about a research study, I know there's money behind it. Money spent, for example on the recently released study about new parents and sleep deprivation. Someone PAID for that to be studied.
Unsure of the reason behind paying for something any number of zombie-like new parents could have told them for nothing.

This is like that, too.
Someone or several entities funded this study.
WHY??

Why does anyone want to know?

Ami said...

Ha, I posted, er, prematurely.

My other question is why don't they just have a separate row of curtained off areas so people can just come in and, well, you know, at their own convenience.

Crazy.

a.generic doc said...

Many areas of medicine are adopting the group visit. Perhaps they could get the samples obtained faster using the competitive aspect of a circle jerk.

was1 said...

even though this is a touchy subject we should't be jerks about it. i believe that the information collected could come in handy.

stacey said...

was1 wins the internet

Packer said...

I FEEL LIKE HAVING A CIGARETTE,and don't smoke

Anonymous said...

So, next time you're in a doctor's waiting room, wondering why it's taking so long and where all the good magazines went...

Anonymous said...

Of course it takes longer with your significant other in the room. you have to use the crusty 5-year-old copy of "Penthouse" they give you, rather than admit that you have your favorite Pornhub videos bookmarked on your phone.

bobbie said...

I'm loving all the responses, but have to agree... "was 1" wins hands down!

Unknown said...

"Come" on, they're guys! they're not going to wash their hands!!!

P. Zaff, DVM said...

Thanks for a good giggle, and an even bigger thanks for expanding my English vocabulary with new colloquialisms regarding masturbation 😂

 
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