Here's Why Your Doctor's Office Never Has Up-To-Date Magazines

Ever notice how there is hardly ever an up-to-date magazine at your doctor's office? Now, recent findings published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) show that this is probably because staff or patients are toting them off. 

"This study is possibly the first to explain the lack of up to date magazines in doctors' waiting rooms and to quantify their loss," said study author Professor Bruce Caroll of the University of Auckland, in a news release. 

For the study, researchers took 87 magazines and stacked them into three mixed piles that were planned in the patients' waiting room of the clinic of a general practitioner in Auckland, New Zealand.

Some of the magazines included in the study were Time magazine, National Geographic, Australian Women's Weekly, The Economist and BBC History.

Findings showed that out of 82 magazines carrying a date on the front cover, about 47 of them were less than two months old, while the remaining were over a year old.

Thirty-one days later, researchers discovered that 41 of the total 87 magazines had disappeared from the office or medical facility. Furthermore, the disappearance of more current magazines was about 1.32 magazines per day.

Just as suspected, researchers found that the current magazines were at a higher risk of going missing than older ones.  Lastly, gossip magazines were more than 14 times more likely to disappear at any time than news ones.

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