Time and the general practitioner: the patient's view

Abstract

Patient satisfaction with the amount of time general practitioners allow them has been questioned. This paper reports the analysis of a questionnaire answered by 1,112 patients in 25 practices in Britain. The questionnaire explored the patients' assessment of the appropriateness of the length of the consultation and their ability to communicate their problem to the doctor.

While most patients (91 per cent) felt that the consultation was long enough, there were a number of patients who were dissatisfied with the length of the consultation and their ability to communicate their problem to the doctor; dissatisfaction increased with shorter booked appointment times, with younger patients, when fewer previous visits to the doctor had been made and when the psychological component of the case was greater. It is particularly disturbing that more than 50 per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 44 years experienced difficulty in telling the doctor about their problem.