• Catarina Neves Santos, Bruno Ferreira Pedrosa, Marília Martins, Fábio Gouveia, Fátima Franco, Margarida João Vardasca, Bernardo Pedro, and Jorge Domingues Nogueira.
• USF Ramada, ACeS Loures-Odivelas-ARSLVT, Lisboa, Portugal.
• Fam Pract. 2024 Aug 14; 41 (4): 494500494-500.

BackgroundInterruptions can impact consultation duration, doctors and patients' satisfaction, and quality of care provided. Although most of them seem to have a negative impact, affecting doctor-patient relationship and interfering with clinical reasoning, which increases the risk of error, there is still no evidence on their global impact on consultations.ObjectivesTo evaluate the number and duration of interruptions during general practice consultations. To compare physicians and patients' perceptions of their urgency and impact, as well as the overall satisfaction with the consultation.MethodsCross-sectional study of a representative sample of annual face-to-face general practice consultations at a Health Centre. Between January and March 2022, anonymous questionnaires were given to physicians and patients after consultation. We performed a descriptive and inferential statistical analysis.ResultsA total of 403 consultations were included. Physicians reported more interruptions than patients (108 vs. 87, P < 0.001). From patients' perspective those interruptions were more urgent (34.5%) compared with physicians' perspective (20.6%; P = 0.029). Patients undervalued their impact on consultations (7.1% of interruptions with a negative impact among patients vs. 24.7% among doctors; P < 0.001). Interruptions did not interfere with patients' satisfaction with consultation (P = 0.135) but were associated with lower physicians' satisfaction with consultation (P = 0.003).ConclusionPhysicians are more critical regarding consultations interruptions, being more aware of their incidence and reporting more often a negative impact, which translates into lower satisfaction with interrupted consultations. Patients devalue the occurrence of interruptions, showing no concern about their impact on security or privacy, and their satisfaction is not affected by them.© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

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