Premium
Patient experience of time duration: strategies for ‘slowing time’ and ‘accelerating time’ in general practices
Author(s) -
Buetow Stephen
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
journal of evaluation in clinical practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.737
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2753
pISSN - 1356-1294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2003.00426.x
Subject(s) - duration (music) , time perception , time management , time out , time allocation , time synchronization , medicine , running time , computer science , psychology , real time computing , nursing , cognition , sociology , psychiatry , art , literature , operating system , social science , algorithm
Approaches to time management in general practices characteristically focus on objective ‘clock time’, for example, through appointment scheduling. No less important, however, is how patients experience time duration. Time is experienced as having passed slowly (time prolongation), quickly (time compression) or in rough synchronization with clock time. Duration has been theorized to be positively associated with information processing. This paper builds on that theory to suggest how practices can influence patients’ subjective experience of duration in the practice environment, for example, by making waiting times appear to quicken and consultations appear to slow.