Helen Salisbury: Fictive schedules and the unbearable load of general practice

On paper, a GP’s working schedule can look quite inviting: consulting for three and a half hours in the morning, with a coffee break in the middle, then a gap for lunch and home visits before a similar length afternoon surgery, finishing at 6 pm. I remember a Ladybird book about The Doctor, which had an illustration of the GP going home to hang nappies on the line before heading back to see her afternoon patients. Nowadays we consider ourselves lucky if we can nip to the shop next door for a sandwich. Ideally, we eat it with coffee among colleagues, but too often we just spread crumbs over our keyboards as we check results and sign prescriptions.Carol Sinnott and colleagues did a time and motion study of GPs’ working days last year and concluded that “the formal schedule of clinical sessions did not accommodate the realities of how GPs…
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