Hospital appointments and the Monday blues
Hospital appointments are often missed because patients feel the Monday blues. This is according to researchers at the University of Glasgow's School of Psychology, who suggested changing hospital and GP appointment scheduling could lead to considerable health and financial savings.
Writing in the online journal PLoS One, Psychologists Dr Rob Jenkins and David Ellis noted the NHS could benefit financially with just a small reduction in the percentage of appointments missed.
The investigators collated their findings using two sets of data - attendance records for 4,538,294 outpatient hospital appointments across Scotland and figures for 10,895 such meetings at one GP clinic in Glasgow.
Dr Jenkins, who is a Chartered Psychologist, noted more appointments are missed towards the start of the week than the end, adding recent psychological studies have shown various emotional responses are evoked on different days of the week.
"Mondays have the most negative response [and] Fridays the most positive. And emotional tone brightens steadily over the intervening days," he added.
Read more on BBC News.
To Whom It May Concern,
The idea that people all over the UK are missing hospital appointments without cancelling them indicates a disenchantment with the NHS and the way it is run. Are the results from this statistical study significant or otherwise the hypothesis cannot be extended beyond the sample researched. Perhaps it is only pertaining to Glasgow in a small niche that his is happening.
The statement about emotional tone, I feel, cannot be justified by a research study as there are unnumbered extraneous variables that could possibly influence the results. This may make the study biased and untenable.
Annon