EM Physicians Dominate Romance Novels

From Yahoo News

If romantic fiction is any guide, any doctor looking for love would be advised to be an emergency room surgeon or deliver babies rather than practise colon resection or remove in-grown toenails.

Hospital novels are one of the fastest-growing areas of romantic fiction which, according to the Romance Writers of America, generates 1.2 billion dollars in annual sales and accounts for 39.3 percent of all fiction sold in the United States.

In an offbeat letter published in Saturday's Lancet, Kelly describes the typical plot structure and characterisation in 20 randomly-selected medical romance novels.

Of the male protagonists, six worked in emergency medicine, five in surgery and three in obstetrics, neonatology and paediatrics, he found.

"There was a marked preponderance of brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiselled features, working in emergency medicine," says Kelly, a University College Dublin psychiatrist.