About how many hours per week does a family medicine doc work? I'm not talking about residency. I've heard some people say they don't work that much, some only 4 days a week. I've heard others say they work almost 60 hours per week. How many days a week are you typically on call overnight?

That's the beauty of family medicine: it depends on the kind of practice you want to go into. I'll give you an example: a friend works as an ER director under the FP umbrella. He works for a major university system hospital and works three 12-hour shifts. He takes four-day weekends and has a nice salary plan with the university: lot of perks and benefits. He just got a hefty 30K raise and loves his life. From what I can see, it's a pretty sweet deal.

Dr. SL,

Check this link out...it shows that FPs average ~50hours/week.

http://medicine.wustl.edu/~residenc/outside/spec/FP_info.html

Also, I read somewhere that many new FPs (even in rural areas) are having it written into their contract that they have call no more than once every 4-5 days. Try and find some of the websites that post FP jobs and see what they are advertising as call schedules.

Willamette