The antecedent in the following sentence is Doctors: Doctors should schedule more time for patients so they do not spend so much time in the waiting room.
Is this a true or false question?
In that sentence, it is unclear whether "they" refers to doctors or patients.
Common sense would imply that it refers to patients, since doctors do not spend time in the waiting room.
There is also a problem with the logic of the statement.
If they scheduled and spent more with with patients, they will not be able to serve as many patients. This might help decrease waiting room time. But it might not. It all depends upon how well they keep to their schedule, and how much time is needed for treatment.
they refers to the patients
In that case the antecedent is patients
To identify the antecedent in a sentence, you need to locate the pronoun that refers back to a noun mentioned earlier in the sentence. In this case, the pronoun "they" refers back to a noun.
Let's break down the sentence:
"Doctors should schedule more time for patients so they do not spend so much time in the waiting room."
The noun mentioned earlier in the sentence is "Doctors." The pronoun "they" in the second part of the sentence refers back to "Doctors." Therefore, "Doctors" is the antecedent in this sentence.
To identify the antecedent, you would look for a pronoun that refers back to a noun mentioned earlier in the sentence and determine which noun it is referring to.