An appointment system in a teaching practice

Abstract

Some patients have difficulty in achieving an appointment to see a doctor in a university teaching practice. Only five per cent of patients indicated serious difficulty. Patients who discriminate in favour of seeing a particular doctor have greater difficulty. It is suggested also that some patients have the same difficulty if they are making an appointment to see a particular doctor.

Clearly there is a need to explore the problem further to determine the nature of the difficulties which patients experience. It might then be expected that improvements can be made which will help patients to achieve appointments more easily. At the same time it has to be recognised that there may be some patients who will continue to have difficulty in achieving an appointment however much they are helped. Such patients may need access to community health care services in a manner entirely different from the appointment system.

Most patients prefer to see their general practitioner by appointment. Both open-access surgeries and appointment systems cause difficulties for patients. The former is associated with the difficulty of long waiting periods and the second with difficulties in achieving an appointment. As some form of appointment system is likely to be continued, particularly for group practices and health centres, it is probably timely to audit patients' experience of achieving appointments.

University teaching practices present general practitioners with unusual additional stresses on an appointment system. The full-time teacher's day is divided between service to patients and teaching or research. Any reduction in the availability of a particular doctor in a group may result in patients having difficulty in making an appointment. This argument could equally apply to any group of practitioners who have commitments other than to general medical services.

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