BERLIN - ALL those resuscitation attempts ending in predictable failure are obviously having an effect: heavy watchers of TV medical dramas are scared of hospitals, new research showed on Thursday.

Researchers at the German Surgery Society (DGCH) said that people who watch programmes like House or ER more than the average viewer have difficulty telling fiction apart from reality when it comes to medical matters.

This is not helped by the fact that every show makes hospital life out to be considerably more dramatic than it actually is, they said in research to be published in full next Wednesday. -- AFP