Sharing control of appointment length with patients in general practice

Abstract

We read with great interest the excellent recent paper by Sampson et al 1 and note their finding that doctors and patients still shared concern about the accuracy with which patients can judge their own consultation length.2,3,4 We recently examined patients’ ability to choose between 10- and 20-minute appointment lengths. For 1 week patients were routinely asked whether they would like an appointment of 10 or 20 minutes, 10 …