Investigating whether education of residents in a group practice increases the length of the outpatient visit.

This prospective study, carried out over an eight-week period in 1990, compared the amount of time required for 468 outpatients in an academic group practice (pediatric orthopedics) to be evaluated by an attending surgeon working with a resident with the time required for 216 patients in the same practice to be evaluated by the attending surgeon only. On the average, 24.2 minutes were added when a resident was involved: 12.6 of these for the resident's examination of the patient and the remaining 11.6 for the resident's discussion of the case with the attending surgeon. These findings suggest that the education process builds in a time cost not only for the patient but for the attending surgeon, who has less time to see additional outpatients than does a private practitioner or a physician in a health maintenance organization.