Public opinion on weekend and evening outpatient clinics

• appointment time
• evening/weekend clinics
• outpatient
• questionnaire

The majority of consultants and specialist registrars in England and Wales voted against the new consultant deal. One point of conflict was the extension of the “normal working week” to 10 pm on weekdays and 1 pm at weekends. This change in working practice was proposed to allow better use of resources, such as outpatient clinics and operating theatres, which lie idle during the evenings and weekends and to offer patients greater choice of appointment times. We surveyed patients attending the ophthalmic departments at two large teaching hospitals to determine public opinion on the introduction of evening and weekend sessions.

During a 2 week period in September 2002, a questionnaire was given to outpatients attending the ophthalmic clinics at Bristol Eye Hospital and St James’s University Hospital, Leeds. Patients were asked to state whether their current appointment times were suitable and which of the following time periods they would find convenient to attend the hospital: weekday morning, afternoon, early evening or late evening, and Saturday or Sunday mornings. An inbuilt control question tested reliability of responses and all those deemed unreliable were excluded …