THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW ...BUT ONLY FOR FIVE MINUTES

PATIENTS who feel fortunate to get a doctor's appointment then find they are in and out of the GP surgery in less than FIVE minutes.

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A fifth of the consultations in England last year were done within that time.

Dennis Reed, of the Silver Voices group for over-60s, said: "It is hard enough to get a face-to-face appointment with a GP these days, without being shown the door before you have had a chance to take your coat off.

"The public wants the family doctor back, who knows your family history and has the time to chat about your general health and wellbeing." He added: "A revolving door policy, with the patient exiting after a couple of minutes clutching a prescription, is not the way to run a primary care service."

Research from the House of Commons Library, commissioned by the Lib Dems, found 22% of GP appointments between January to October lasted five minutes.

The area with the highest ratio of sessions done in five minutes was North East Lincolnshire, at 29.2%; the district with the lowest was North Staffordshire, on 16.3%.

There were 300 million consultations last year and the average length is around 10 minutes, says the British Medical Journal.