Many romantic novels show the apparent inevitability of uncontrolled passions in the context of emergency medicine, writes a psychiatrist in the Correspondence section of this week's edition of The Lancet.
Dr Brendan Kelly, University College Dublin and Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland, says: "Romantic fiction generates US$1.2 billion in sales annually and accounts for 39.3% of all fiction sold in the USA. In recent decades, medical romance has emerged as a substantial subgenre within romance fiction, and, to explore this area further, I studied 20 randomly selected medical romance novels."
In his research, Dr Kelly found most plots were set in primary care or emergency settings, including emergency departments and airborne medical teams. The most common romantic pairing was male doctor with female doctor, followed my male doctor with female nurse.
Dr Kelly writes: "There was a marked preponderance of brilliant, tall, muscular male doctors with chiselled features, working in emergency medicine; they were commonly of Mediterranean origin and had personal tragedies in their pasts. Female doctors and nurses ended to be skilled, beautiful, and determined, but still compassionate; many had overcome substantial personal and profession obstacles in their lives. Protagonists of both sexes had frequently neglected their personal lives to care better for their patients, many of whom had life-threatening illnesses from which they nonetheless managed to recover."
He concludes: "These novels draw attention to the romantic possibilities of primary care settings and the apparent inevitability of uncontrolled passions in the context of emergency medicine, especially as practised on aeroplanes. These novels suggest that there is an urgent need to include instruction in the arts of romance in training programmes for doctors and nurses who intend working in these settings."
The paper associated with this release can be found at the link below:
http://multimedia.thelancet.com/pdf/press/Medrom.pdf
Journal
The Lancet