dr-exmedic.com

A number of studies (both in- and out-of-hospital) have looked at timing:  specifically, whether watches worn by providers agree with each other.  The latest study used a convenience sample of EMS providers–the technical term for asking the time of whoever happened to show up that week.  What struck me was not that many watches were a few minutes off (only 36.9% matched the atomic clock, average time difference was 2.96 minutes, different numbers for cell phones and ambulance clocks and blah blah blah), but that of the 47 watches checked, at least 1 was 58 minutes fast. 

I’m not expecting everyone to be as anal-retentive as I am, but if you clearly don’t notice that your watch is almost a full hour fast, why do you bother wearing one?  It’s probably the only time-related thing that could possibly bug me more than the number of my classmates who don’t wear a watch at all (how are you supposed to know if the pulse on the chart is accurate if you’ve literally never bothered to find out?  I suppose I could file that under a “medical student pet peeves” series).