Reading

As a matter of fact, I tried no fewer than a dozen of methods over the years to keep up with the literature and prevent my desk being flooded with unread journals. (All visitors to my office know just too well I am an obsessive follower of the clear desk policy.)

To begin with, I was young and had a better memory, I read the journal and then threw it away. On rare occasions I made some notes - written or electronic - in case I need some further reference. In general, I read through every review article but only the abstract of original ones. (I also read the Case Record of the Massachusetts General Hospital and the correspondence column of the NEJM, as well as the Obituary of The Lancet.) Alas, that only work when my reading list was short; that was also the only possible strategy when there was no sophisticated information technology.

(I claim no credit of this strategy; I learnt it from RJ Epstein, as described in the previous edition of Medicine for Examination.)

When my reading list grew longer, I almost always read only the summary of the review articles, and then study the tables, figures, and the first sentence (sometimes the last, depending on the writing style of the author) of each paragraph. As to original articles, I usually read only the conclusion of the abstract. (That's why I hate the Nature Publishing Group; their journals use an unstructured style for their abstracts, so that it is sometimes difficult to find what the main point is.)

What do I do with the journal after reading?

I tear out the useful pages (mostly the figures and tables of those review articles, sometimes with text highlighted), and file them in folders according to the subject. I also keep the table of content - sometimes with a few notes scribbled - for further reference. I usually use half an hour or so every Saturday morning to file the pages that I kept from the previous week.

I did not invent this method either; my previous colleague GK taught me that much.