Patient experience of time duration: strategies for 'slowing time' and 'accelerating time' in general practices

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.