BMJ 2002;324:880-882 ( 13 April )

Primary care

Evolving general practice consultation in Britain: issues of length and context

George K Freeman, professor of general practice ^a, John P Horder, past president ^b, John G R Howie, emeritus professor of general practice ^c, A Pali Hungin, professor of general practice ^d, Alison P Hill, general practitioner ^e, Nayan C Shah, general practitioner ^b, Andrew Wilson, senior lecturer ^f. 

^a Centre for Primary Care and Social Medicine, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London W6 8RP, ^b Royal College of General Practitioners, London SW7 1PU, ^c Department of General Practice, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9DX, ^d Centre for Health Studies, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3HN, ^e Kilburn Park Medical Centre, London NW6, ^f Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Leicester, Leicester LE5 4PW

Correspondence to: G Freeman g.freeman@ic.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In 1999 Shah¹ and others said that the Royal College of General Practitioners should advocate longer consultations in general practice as a matter of policy. The college set up a working group chaired by A P Hungin, and a systematic review of literature on consultation length in general practice was commissioned. The working group agreed that the available evidence would be hard to interpret without discussion of the changing context within which consultations now take place. For many years general practitioners and those who have surveyed patients' opinions in the United Kingdom have complained about short consultation time, despite a steady increase in actual mean length. Recently Mechanic pointed out that this is also true in the United States.² Is there any justification for a further increase in mean time allocated per consultation in general practice?

We report on the outcome of extensive debate among a group of general practitioners with . . . [Full text of this article]

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