The Healthcare Commission report this week into NHS complaints showed that GPs' patients often felt that they were being rushed. They might have a point. Since I was a fluffy trainee GP, the time allocated for routine appointments has increased by over a third from seven to ten minutes. However, this has been swallowed up by the compulsory paperwork that forms part of every consultation.

By the time I have ticked all the government-approved boxes by nagging you about smoking, drinking, eating too much, eating too little, using a sunbed, not using a condom, and have taken your blood pressure, measured your height, weight and waistline, checked your urine for sugar and asked whether you felt like topping yourself recently, it's almost time to push the button that lights up the “Next patient please” sign outside the door.

Whatever you actually wanted to see me about will have to squeeze into the remaining 90 seconds or wait until next time, unless of course you're an obese, malnourished, nicotine- addicted diabetic melancholic alcoholic with an all-over tan and a burning sensation when you pee, in which case you've absolutely come to the right place.

With such pressure on our time, it's no wonder that GPs are considered impatient, brusque and ideal candidates for TV shows such as Grumpy Old Men. That was suggested by a patient of mine who was grievously offended when I implied, ever so gently, that showing up ten minutes late for a ten-minute appointment could be construed as taking the mickey.

I know that he thinks that way because he was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to write to my practice manager. He also complained that he had to wait 40 minutes because I insisted on seeing other people who had arrived on time before I was able to fit him in by sacrificing my coffee break.

If he had an excuse for being late, he didn't mention it. Ironically, he spent five minutes moaning about how difficult it had been to get the appointment in the first place. He would have used up the rest of his time bad-mouthing the NHS in general and GPs in particular if I hadn't skilfully directed the conversation on to the subject of his pressing need for medical care by using one of those tried and tested stock phrases from the “real life GP's workbook”: “Get to the bloody point then, my coffee's getting cold.”

If you look down on to a busy crossroads, the thing that strikes you is not how many accidents there are but how few. It's the same with the NHS. Every year there are almost 400 million patient contacts and last year they gave rise to 140,000 complaints. Ten thousand were referred to the Commission and, of those, one in five was considered justifiable.

Ball park figure: odds of 200,000:1. For the average GP working 48 hours a week, that's about 15 years' worth of face-to-face consultations.

If you really think that your GPs let you down, by all means put pen to paper. Don't bother, though, to complain about us using the internet; we know where to look for the most up-to-date information.

Don't worry if we look up drug doses in the textbook before issuing a prescription, unless you'd really prefer us to hazard a guess.

And don't whinge if we keep you waiting ten minutes; just be glad that you weren't the poor sod who needed the extra time to sort out their problems.

And remember that we all have noticeboards in our common rooms. Last year's letter from the bloke who alleged that I used “undue force” while examining his testicles is still up there. The letter's a bit yellow around the edges and the green ink has faded in the sunlight, but it never fails to raise a smile.

Dr Copperfield is a GP in Essex. He also writes for Pulse magazine and Pulsetoday.co.uk

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