One of my favorite songs of the 60s, Does Anyone Really Know what Time it is?, and the song has a great line “Does anyone really care?”
Both patients and physicians really care. My friends, neither physicians nor my patients, often tell me stories about brief visits. Occasionally I hear praise about a physician who really spent time and listened. My physician friends often lament that they do not spend enough time with patients, and research confirms that. A wonderful piece in the BMJ makes the point brilliantly – Margaret McCartney: Why GPs are always running late
An intelligent, kind friend says to me, “My GP is always running late—why?”
I try to explain that her GP is probably similar to me. Even arriving early and staying late, I still only have about 12 minutes for each patient. And I have to fit a lot into those 12 minutes.
…
As a colleague puts it, general practice is based on a lie—a lie that we can do this safely and well in 10 minutes. I reckon that acceptably safe practice would take double that, and excellent practice would need more again to ensure that everything’s in place for proper, shared decision making.
No one goes into medicine for an easy life. But I’m haunted by a feeling of persistent failure. We need to know: what expectations can we realistically have of the time currently available to us—and how much more time and resources should we really have to do it well?
