Poor Handwriting Remains a Significant Problem in Medicine

Abstract

care, bringing the patient back five times so that we can complete our history taking, examination, investigation and management plan. From the patients' perspective it takes no account of the amount of time a patient may spend trying to get an appointment and waiting to be seen. The net result of our 1948 view of the consultation is that we have to keep seeing patients more regularly, creating a selfperpetuating demand for appointments that are never quite long enough. We seem to be fulfilling the negative comments about general practice made by a social commentator in 1912 as 'perfunctory work. .. of perfunctory men!' 2 And all the time the mandarins tell us that we need to be seeing patients more quickly. You can't reconcile continuity with easy access-or, ultimately, patient satisfaction with short, sharp, ineffective appointments. So here's an inconvenient truth. Why not introduce a right for patients to have a minimum 15 minute appointment with their GP? It should be a standard for the NHS just as much as clean wards, reduced waiting times for operations and free care at the point of delivery. Reinforce it by stating that GPs should see a maximum of 28 patients a day and see what happens. It will reduce the demand for appointments, improve satisfaction for both patient and doctor, and allow doctors to deliver the more advanced care that current knowledge requires-and so reduce the demands on the secondary care services. Try it and see. All we have to fear is another sixty years of the same! Competing interests None declared.

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