Doctors and time spent in clinic

[nychila]

How many hours do doctors of different specialties who are not involved with research, teaching, or heavy administration, eg. private practice, spend in the clinic seeing patients per week?

Do surgeons spend about half of their time in the clinic, ie. 30 hours over 3 days?

Do family doctors and pediatricians spend almost all their time in the clinic, ie. 40 hours over 5 days?

Do cardiologists spend almost all their time in the clinic, ie. 50 hours over 5 days, and those with inpatient responsibilities about 40 hours?

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[Winged Scapula]

I'm a surgeon and spend 2 - 2.5 days in clinic per week; this seems to be average for general surgeons and those in my specialty. I would think it would be tough to find enough time to do cases with only 2 days/week in the OR.

 

[Junge]

I think your question is a bit too broad. Certain specialties are easy to answer i.e EM won't spend a day in clinic. Otherwise it really depends. Take family med for example. I worked with a doc early in my pre-med days that did clinic 3-5 days per week. It varied because he would work in the ED 2-4 shifts a month and wouldn't have clinic those days. He also did OB and had to cancel clinic a few days for that. In med school the family doc I worked with did clinic M-F and never saw the hospital because they had hospitalists managing inpatients. I also have a friend graduating an FM residency that signed a job as a hospitalist and will have 0 days of clinic. Granted FM is a versitile field but this also applies to peds and IM as well as the can be clinic based or be hospitalists. Some specialties are pretty set such as derm being 100% clinic based or EM never being in clinic. Many other specialties can very.

 

[dyspareunia]

I'm a surgeon and spend 2 - 2.5 days in clinic per week; this seems to be average for general surgeons and those in my specialty. I would think it would be tough to find enough time to do cases with only 2 days/week in the OR.

How many days per week do you work?

 

[Winged Scapula]

How many days per week do you work?

If by work you mean *scheduled clinic and OR cases*, then I work 5 days per week. But I have hospital consults and post op patients to round on so many weekends it typically works out to a little more than 5 days.

 

[dyspareunia]

If by work you mean *scheduled clinic and OR cases*, then I work 5 days per week. But I have hospital consults and post op patients to round on so many weekends it typically works out to a little more than 5 days.

Do you have whole days devoted to OR/rounds and whole days devoted to clinic? All of the surgeons I've shadowed have said it trying to do half-and-half (e.g. cases in the morning then clinic in the afternoon) is difficult in terms of scheduling.

Also are you gensurg?

 

[Winged Scapula]

Do you have whole days devoted to OR/rounds and whole days devoted to clinic? All of the surgeons I've shadowed have said it trying to do half-and-half (e.g. cases in the morning then clinic in the afternoon) is difficult in terms of scheduling.

Also are you gensurg?

M, W and half day Friday in OR; whole day T, Th in office and half day Friday. I agree with the other surgeons that half and half days are difficult, as you always run late in one or the other. However, I used to do a whole day in the OR on Friday and found I needed more time to see patients in the office hence the change in my schedule.

I am general surgery trained with a fellowship in breast surg onc; my practice is 100% breast surgery so includes a lot of in office biopsies and procedures.

 

[mvenus929]

A lot of the attendings (in IM, FM, and Peds) I've seen who aren't in full academic practice work 4ish days per week--either they stop seeing patients early in the afternoon and work 5 days, or they see patients all day and have one day off or for 'administrative' purposes (usually finishing up charts, going over consult notes, labs, billing, etc).