New Delhi:The next time you visit your doctor for consultation, you might want to take a look at your watch to see for how long the consultation session really lasts. Because, according to a recent study, the length of medical consultation, also called as primary care consultancy, on an average is 2 minutes in India.
The study published in medical journal, BMJ Open, which is the largest international study on consulting time, has revealed that India is listed among the worst.While in stark contrast, consultation time in first world countries like Sweden, Norway, USA, is more than 20 minutes on an average.
Researchers from various UK hospitals worked on this study.To tease out the potential impact on patients and the wider healthcare system, the researchers reviewed the data on consultation length from 178 relevant studies covering 67 countries and more than 28.5 million consultations.
They included both peer reviewed research and the 'grey literature' - research produced outside of traditional academic or commercial channels - published between 1946 and 2016 in English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.
"The results showed that average consultation length varied widely, from 48 seconds in Bangladesh, to 22.5 minutes in Sweden," researchers said.
In 15 countries, which represent around half of the world's population, the appointment lasted less than five minutes. And it lasted under 10 minutes in a further 25.
It is cleared from the study that, as demand for primary health care rises around the globe, the length of a consultation has increasingly come under pressure.
The study conducted by researchers from various UK hospitals said: "It is concerning that 18 countries covering around 50% of the world's population have a latest-reported mean consultation length of five minutes or less. Such a short consultation length is likely to adversely affect patient care and the workload and stress of the consulting physician."
It also says that patients in such countries spend more in buying antibiotics and don't share a good relationship with their doctors. Eventually, it affects the health condition of patients.
Consultation length seems to be shortening in some low and middle income countries, which may have important implications for population growth and the expansion of treatment options, researchers said.
Shorter consultation length has also been associated with multiple drugs prescribed to a patient (polypharmacy), overuse of antibiotics, and poor communication with patients, they said.
Although this is the largest international review of consultation length to date, the researchers highlight that the quality of the evidence was graded 'good' in less than half the included studies.
Differences between rural and urban, and public and private practices, were not taken into account, they said.
It is believed that, overcrowded healthcare hubs and a shortage of primary care physicians are the primary reasons behind such a short medical consultation length. “Shorter consultation times have been linked to poorer health outcomes for patients and a heightened risk of burnout for doctors,” states the study.
One can say, in this process, the losers are the patients as they ends up spending more time at the pharmacy buying medicines than spending more time with the doctor discussing the ailment
Overall, the study concludes that a short consultation time may have important implications for population growth and the expansion of treatment options. Well, let us just hope that the medical fraternity and the government take note of this and improve the skewed doctor-patient ratio in India.
References:
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