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As a GP Principal I find that the number of patient contacts a day doesn’t vary that much even when colleagues are on leave.
What does vary is the amount of ‘tasks’:
Medication enquiries
Blood results
Letter scans
Medication reviews
Benefit & Insurance reports
Practice admin
Etc
These can double.
It’s trying to fit all this in on top of patient contacts that makes me stressed and tired
A useful contribution. I have worked as locum in twelve practices in the last year in Scotland. 80% provide fifteen minute appointments.
12 appointments from 08:30hrs and a similar number from 15:00hrs means around 6 hours face to face with patients whereas15 ten minute appointments morning and afternoon consumes just 5 hours.
Add phone consultations (5) and house-calls (3) brings the contacts per day to 32 and 38 respectively, either side of the crucial 35 figure. While fifteen minute appointments may be preferred, additional time consulting has its stress and the content of the consultation is likely to include more mental health and social problems, some of these intractable.
In 2c practices, managed by health boards, locums are now having there workload capped at 10-12 appointments of fifteen minutes duration with a maximum of 2 house-calls and restricted mail review.
This makes sense for the individual clinician protecting their health and pacing their career but as the BMA has stated, makes for a much more expensive service nor do we have GPs in numbers to provide this. We must hope, especially with a new contract due in Scotland.
Re: Daily number of patient contacts as alternative measure of workload in general practice
As a GP Principal I find that the number of patient contacts a day doesn’t vary that much even when colleagues are on leave.
What does vary is the amount of ‘tasks’:
Medication enquiries
Blood results
Letter scans
Medication reviews
Benefit & Insurance reports
Practice admin
Etc
These can double.
It’s trying to fit all this in on top of patient contacts that makes me stressed and tired
Competing interests: No competing interests