Unexpectedly, we found that the median visit length at the oncology clinics was 13.5 minutes (range: 2.1 to 21.5) but only 10.5 minutes (range 2.1 to 21.5) in the hemato-oncology clinic (P<0.0001). 6,813 patients (68%) were seen by oncologists, 2,852 patients (28%) by hematologists and 347 patients (4%) were followed by both. It was longer during winter time (P<0.0001) and morning sessions (P<0.0001). The median length of visit was 12.2 minutes (range: 2.1 to 21.5). The median age of our patients was 67 years (range: 18 to 102) and 7,292 were females (54%). To exclude technical outliers, we analyzed 33,371 visits that ranged in length between the 25 th and the 75 th percentile. Altogether 57,922 visits were recorded in our Q-flow system. The median number of visits per patient was 2 (range: 1 to 49). Results: During 2017, 10,513 patients visited the oncology and 3,314 patients visited the hemato-oncology outpatient clinics in our institute. Additional data was collected from patients' electronic medical records. With this software we collected data on all consecutive visits at the hemato-oncology and oncology outpatient clinics between January and December 2017. This software records the length of patients-physicians' meetings and provides patients' demographic data. Since 2005 a customer-time management software (Q-Flow®) is routinely used in our institute. Methods: This study was conducted at the Davidoff Cancer Center, Rabin Medical Center, Israel. However, to our knowledge visit-time was never quantified. A recently published study found that doctors estimate that they spend on average between 13 to 16 minutes with a patient. In this study we narrowed our perspective on patient-doctors' bonding to a single dimension, the length of time doctors spends with their patients. Patients with cancer perceive their doctors as their primary source for information and support. Introduction: The relationship between doctors and their patients has received philosophical, sociological, and literary attention throughout history.
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