Summary In 15 countries, appointment lasted less than five minutes.
LAHORE (Dunya News)- Doctors in Pakistan barely give 1.79 minutes to each patient on average, according to a global study which found that primary care consultations last less than five minutes for half of the world’s population, reported Roznama Dunya on Saturday.
Bangladesh is at the bottom of the list with primary care consultation time of just 48 seconds while the Scandinavian country Sweden is at top with satisfying score of 22:30 minutes.
Situation in neighboring India is also alarming where mean duration stands at barely two minutes or 120 seconds, the largest international study on consulting time, published in the British medical journal BMJ Open, found.
“Shorter consultation times have been linked to poorer health outcomes for patients and a heightened risk of burnout for doctors,” researchers wrote in the journal.
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.
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.
In developed countries, average consultation time seemed to steadily increase: by 12 seconds a year to over 20 minutes in the US; and by just over four seconds a year to 10 minutes in the UK.
