ArticleJournal of evaluation in clinical practice2025
On Missed Appointments: The Ethics of Nonattendance in General Practice.
Article in Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
introductionA substantial number of general practice appointments in England are missed each year, which incurs considerable cost to the NHS. In the absence of an authoritative policy, there is variation in how GPs manage missed appointments in this setting. There are various reasons for why patients miss their GP appointments, many of which lie outside the patients' control.
methodsThis paper undertakes an ethical analysis, using the framework of Principlism, of missed GP appointments in the NHS.
findingsThis paper finds that missed appointments might prevent the patient's autonomy (which requires the health problem for which the GP appointment was booked to be adequately addressed) from being upheld, frustrate the possibility of promoting beneficence (particularly among patients with multimorbidity and mental health problems), threaten non-maleficence (also particularly among patients with multimorbidity and mental health problems), and violate the principle of justice due to exacerbating health inequalities and wasted scarce healthcare resources.
conclusionThis paper suggests that GPs should make efforts to contact patients who miss their appointments, via telephone in cases of missed in-person appointments, and via multiple attempted calls in cases of missed telephone or online appointments.
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Registered trials
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