BMJ 1994;309:878-879 (1 October)

Letters

Waiting times in an ophthalmic outpatient department

EDITOR, - A M Ansons and colleagues describe some of the problems that a busy academic eye department is experiencing in meeting the patient's charter.1 At around the time of the charter's introduction we conducted a survey of ophthalmic outpatient services in a district general hospital with three consultants and serving 250 000 people. Information was collected by six management students, who obtained details of 393 (95%) of the 414 patients attending clinics during one week.

Overall, 116 patients were seen by a consultant, 58 by the registrar, 190 by one of the three general house officers, and 50 by one of the general practitioner clinical assistants. The clinics were usually fully booked but had an additional daily workload of between one and 15 unbooked patients (referrals from the accident and emergency department and urgent referrals from general practitioners) added to them. The senior house officers ran a daily casualty . . . [Full text of this article]


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