Video Games & Sick Leave
By Dr. S. Seneviratne
Consultant, University of Elephant & Castle, UK.
Introduction
The future of medicine relies on our trainees. Their development is in our hands. However, a disturbing lack of regard has developed in this medical subgroup for their responsibilities around the time of launches of so-called “games” for the computer, such as Halo 2, Doom 3 and of course the culprit celebre, Grand Theft Auto. The author has personal experience of such behaviour, and its infectious nature, which leads to self-limiting epidemics of 1 week or so.
The study’s aims are to investigate rates of junior doctor absence days around the release dates of various major games, and compare them with releases of rubbish games.
The study’s aims are to investigate rates of junior doctor absence days around the release dates of various major games, and compare them with releases of rubbish games.
Method We sampled game releases from Playstation 2, PC and Nintendo Gamecube over a 2-year period. We excluded Gameboy Advance games, as these are played by children who are too young to enter medical school. Dreamcast, N64 and PS1 games have become obsolete. As the author does not possess an Xbox this was also excluded.