The 15 minute consultation

“How long should a general practice consultation be?” seems a boring and irrelevant question, but it isn’t. In the 1980s general practitioners had five minute appointments. A literally standing joke ran: remove the patient’s chair from the consulting room to speed consulting. Speed was good. Pressure, well that was the job: deal with it or get out of general practice. But thinking became more “enlightened”: speed wasn’t always good according to the Royal College of General Practitioners. Doctors needed more time to deal with complex needs, to be more patient centred, for health promotion, and …