Doctors  

Fun Facts About Doctors

• The famous Hippocratic Oath that doctors traditionally take is not legaly mandatory in most countries today, including in the U.S. Most medical schools use updated, personalized or alternative oaths instead.
• The longest recorded surgical procedure lasted 96 hours (four days). In 1951, a team of doctors removed a 300-pound ovarian cyst from a patient during a surgery which started on February 4 and ended on February 8.
• Healthcare professionals, particularly surgeons, have a superstition about never saying the word "quiet" (or "slow") while on call or during a shift. That's because the moment it is said, they will suddenly be overrun with emergencies.
• The French physician who invented the stethoscope in 1816 did so because he was too embarrassed to put his ear directly on a young woman's chest to listen to her heart.
• In the U.S., family medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine have the shortest medical residency (3 years), while neurosurgery is famously the longest (7 years) and is usually followed up by 1–2 additional years of fellowship.
• Recent data suggests doctors write about 6.3 billion prescriptions annually in the United States alone. That's about 19 prescriptions for each American every year.
• In medieval Europe, barbers often performed surgery. The red-and-white barber pole symbolizes this history, with red representing blood and white standing for bandages.
• Studies consistently show the average doctor today spends more time looking at a computer screen (roughly 60%) during a patient visit than looking at the actual patient (40%). This might not be all that bad, however. Because researchers also discovered that surgeons who play video games make 37% fewer errors during laparoscopic surgery than those who did not play.