Everybody says that doctors work for many hours but this article disagrees with them?

[Nxmeless]

This article was written by the AMA and it says that most of the doctors work less than 80 hours a week so why do I keep on seeing doctors complaining about their work hours ?
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/many-hours-average-physician-workweek

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[Aubrey Graham]

Reality vs rules? A lot of stuff to do off the clock as well?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[baratheonfire]

This article was written by the AMA and it says that most of the doctors work less than 80 hours a week so why do I keep on seeing doctors complaining about their work hours ?
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/many-hours-average-physician-workweek

80 hrs is a lot

 

[Nxmeless]

80 hrs is a lot

80 hrs = 12 (max) a day. But people keep on saying that doctors work for more than 14 hours a day ?

 

[baratheonfire]

80 hrs = 12 (max) a day. But people keep on saying that doctors work for more than 14 hours a day ?

I don't think people say that, also that figure is without weekends factored in.

I scribe for a family med physician and she works 33 hrs a week

 

[ace_inhibitor111]

12 hours every day for the rest of your life sounds like hell on earth.

I think you're confusing residency hours with attending hours.

 

[Nxmeless]

12 hours every day for the rest of your life sounds like hell on earth.

I think you're confusing residency hours with attending hours.

Then how many hours a day does a physician work ?

 

[baratheonfire]

Then how many hours a day does a physician work ?

However many they want

 

[Orthosurg1]

This article was written by the AMA and it says that most of the doctors work less than 80 hours a week so why do I keep on seeing doctors complaining about their work hours ?
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/many-hours-average-physician-workweek

Even if they work less than 80 hours a week, 79 hours is still a lot, you know what I mean? I think it's hard to give a definite answer to how many hours they work because it is so varied by specialty. Family Medicine without weekends is different than emergency with shift work is different than a surgeon who has to take call.

 

[Doctor-S]

Let's see ...academic teaching ... students ... lectures ... office hours ... grading ... paperwork ... advising; hospital practice ... patients ... training ... rounds ... presenting ... supervision ... more paperwork; research ... data ... surgeries ... medicine ... lab ... results ... analyses ... reports ... more paperwork ... and "on call" ... so the hours add up. To be honest though: I expected a lot of work hours and it doesn't matter to me because I love my career (and I still have time for family, friends, pets and a yearly vacation). Just saying - things can be balanced.

 

[Labkid]

I wouldn't put to much stock into one article. I'd look for multiple articles and see if they find consensus on any claims from their data. I will tell you that less than 80hrs is not little. I had spent nearly 70hrs one week in the lab when I was researching (due to a few equipment failures and having to repeat experiments because of that). It is not easy.

That being said it seems to me that the physician profession is far too varied to say "Most doctors work X amount".

If I had to wager I'd guess that MD/PhDs or Physicians that are also Professors at a school work the most hours and private practice physicians most likely work the least. Even then there are probably many exceptions to that rule... which really makes it not a rule at all. That's sort of the point I'm trying to get across.

In the end if you work hard I'm willing to bet you'll find a place in medicine that suits your needs for amount of hours spent working provided that you truly love medicine.

 

[ImmaDocNowHuh]

...have you ever worked a full-time job? The idea that "oh, it's less than 80 hours/week, so it must not be that bad" is hilarious. A standard 9-5 full-time workweek for most people is 40 hours. Try working 60-70 hours a week, then ask why people complain about it.

 

[Psai]

...have you ever worked a full-time job? The idea that "oh, it's less than 80 hours/week, so it must not be that bad" is hilarious. A standard 9-5 full-time workweek for most people is 40 hours. Try working 60-70 hours a week, then ask why people complain about it.

Can confirm. 60-70 hour weeks suck

 

[FutureOncologist]

I work more than 80 hours/week with everything. I posted this elsewhere, but I work anytime "on the clock" for 76-78 hours each week. However, I bring my work home to delegate more time seeing patients and other pre-op and post-op care. I work less hours on "on-call" weeks, but I get a few pages each night on average. Overall, I think I put in 80 hours total work each week.

Be glad this isn't the 60's or 70's. Some attendings who've worked then say we have it easy, when work wasn't capped at 80 hours. Some surgeons I know have lived in the hospital for a whole month at a time, with a family back home, because of the patient load and residency requirements.

 

[Labkid]

Some surgeons I know have lived in the hospital for a whole month at a time, with a family back home, because of the patient load and residency requirements.

Holy crap. I never heard of that one before.

 

[theonlytycrane]

The pediatrician (outpatient clinic) I shadowed worked 12, 12 hour shifts a month. I'm not sure if this is normal for pediatrics, though. It's likely very dependent on type of work and specialty.

 

[JustAPhD]

A lot of jobs have high expectations that require working when you're technically off the clock. Physicians tend to work a lot of hours anyways; couple that with work that they have to get done while technically "not working" just to keep up and you can see how the hours quickly pile up.

 

[LizzyM]

FutureOncologist said: ↑
Some surgeons I know have lived in the hospital for a whole month at a time, with a family back home, because of the patient load and residency requirements.

Holy crap. I never heard of that one before.

Why do you think they are called "residents"? It is because back in the "olden days" (when doctors your grandparents' ages were in training), the doctors in training had a residence in the hospital, they lived there, ate there, sent their laundry to the hospital laundry.

 

[mvenus929]

The pediatrician (outpatient clinic) I shadowed worked 12, 12 hour shifts a month. I'm not sure if this is normal for pediatrics, though. It's likely very dependent on type of work and specialty.

Highly dependent even in pediatrics depending on your practice type. Many outpatient practices have you seeing patients about 35-40 hours per week, but then you have to catch up on notes, phone calls, prior authorizations, prescription refills, billing... And that's if you're only outpatient... Many places also have light inpatient work, where you might see 2-5 patients in the morning before you see your clinic patients, and you may be on call every 5th day and have to answer lots of phone calls in the middle of the night. Some even have ER call for places with rural ERs. So it tends to be more like 50-60 hours per week. Which wears on you a lot over time. I work 60-70 hours per week on average in residency and I feel like I don't have a life outside because I'm either sleeping or catching up on chores (cleaning, cooking, laundry, seeing the dentist, grocery shopping, etc, etc) on my days off. I can't imagine how people with families do it.

 

[efle]

Good place to link to one of my favorite figures about this. Full article is here. The axis isn't clear there, but it's hours/year above or below family med, which is shown as 0.

The overall across all surveyed physicians was a median of 2420/year or ~47/week. Overall interquartile range was 1960-2940/year or ~38-56/week.

You can go into medicine and expect to work less than 80 hour weeks, lol. Depending on specialty you don't have to go anywhere near that.

 

[JJRousseau]

Let's see ...academic teaching ... students ... lectures ... office hours ... grading ... paperwork ... advising; hospital practice ... patients ... training ... rounds ... presenting ... supervision ... more paperwork; research ... data ... surgeries ... medicine ... lab ... results ... analyses ... reports ... more paperwork ... and "on call" ... so the hours add up. To be honest though: I expected a lot of work hours and it doesn't matter to me because I love my career (and I still have time for family, friends, pets and a yearly vacation). Just saying - things can be balanced.

This whirlwind sounds amazing to me. I'm keen to pursue academic medicine and I hope I can post a comment exactly like this in ten to fifteen years.

 

[IlDestriero]

How many hours a physician works is entirely dependent on their job, their specialty, and how much they want to work. In my job, as an anesthesiologist, we target 50 hours a week as reasonable. In reality I think we actually work less. That's fine by me. I have other colleagues elsewhere that work much more, and generally make more, and that's their choice. I am friends with two ENT surgeons. One is on the golf course several times a week, rarely works after 3, etc. while the other is regularly working until 8 or 9 PM, Saturday clinic, etc.. The difference in their income is more than three fold. Those were choices that they made to have the lifestyle and career that they wanted.


--
Il Destriero

 

[JJRousseau]

Why do you think they are called "residents"? It is because back in the "olden days" (when doctors your grandparents' ages were in training), the doctors in training had a residence in the hospital, they lived there, ate there, sent their laundry to the hospital laundry.

I assume this changed, because it was too expensive to use hospital space to put people up? I bet the transition was fun for the folks where the stipend was relatively similar but they had to fork out their rent. I'm very curious about the history of medical education after reading this comment. I've read a couple of books on the evolution of the physicians role in research and the overall structure of academic medicine, but never about purely clinical training. Any recommendations anyone? (I want a good meaty history - and I'd be keen to grab a UK version as well.)

 

[Labkid]

Why do you think they are called "residents"? It is because back in the "olden days" (when doctors your grandparents' ages were in training), the doctors in training had a residence in the hospital, they lived there, ate there, sent their laundry to the hospital laundry.

Well I never knew that but it all makes sense now. Cool fact!

 

[LizzyM]

The story I like best is "intern" by Doctor X. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/432252.Intern You can find used copies for < $5. It is a fictionalized account of an internship year in the hospital in the 1950s.
Hospitals had something like dorms and there was often housing for students in the nursing school and sometimes for the registered nurses, too. It wasn't fancy or expensive to maintain.

Going back another generation or two, I can recommend, "Safe Deliverance" by Frederick C. Irving MD published in 1942 and which begins with a discussion of his grandfather's medical practice and his own medical education starting in the early twentieth century.

 

[JJRousseau]

The story I like best is "intern" by Doctor X. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/432252.Intern You can find used copies for < $5. It is a fictionalized account of an internship year in the hospital in the 1950s.
Hospitals had something like dorms and there was often housing for students in the nursing school and sometimes for the registered nurses, too. It wasn't fancy or expensive to maintain.

Going back another generation or two, I can recommend, "Safe Deliverance" by Frederick C. Irving MD published in 1942 and which begins with a discussion of his grandfather's medical practice and his own medical education starting in the early twentieth century.

Thank you - I will look into these! "Safe Deliverance" sounds particularly fascinating. I have my great, great grandfather's (last doctor on either side of the family) patient notebook and his medical dictionary (at 1905, the definition for antibiotic is spectacular - along the lines of "against life" and that's it.) and I really enjoy looking at the perspective of medicine long ago.

 

[LizzyM]

Thank you - I will look into these! "Safe Deliverance" sounds particularly fascinating. I have my great, great grandfather's (last doctor on either side of the family) patient notebook and his medical dictionary (at 1905, the definition for antibiotic is spectacular - along the lines of "against life" and that's it.) and I really enjoy looking at the perspective of medicine long ago.

You may also like, Manhattan Country Doctor
http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/12271
The link above will link you to a treasure trove of medicine-related literature.

 

[theonlytycrane]

Highly dependent even in pediatrics depending on your practice type. Many outpatient practices have you seeing patients about 35-40 hours per week, but then you have to catch up on notes, phone calls, prior authorizations, prescription refills, billing... And that's if you're only outpatient... Many places also have light inpatient work, where you might see 2-5 patients in the morning before you see your clinic patients, and you may be on call every 5th day and have to answer lots of phone calls in the middle of the night. Some even have ER call for places with rural ERs. So it tends to be more like 50-60 hours per week. Which wears on you a lot over time. I work 60-70 hours per week on average in residency and I feel like I don't have a life outside because I'm either sleeping or catching up on chores (cleaning, cooking, laundry, seeing the dentist, grocery shopping, etc, etc) on my days off. I can't imagine how people with families do it.

Great insight, thanks for this! In your 3rd year schedule in your profile, how long are each of those blocks? And do you still see patients during research?

 

[Mad Jack]

This article was written by the AMA and it says that most of the doctors work less than 80 hours a week so why do I keep on seeing doctors complaining about their work hours ?
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/ama-wire/post/many-hours-average-physician-workweek

Uh, dude, anything over 50 hours is pretty brutal in a high-stress field. 80 hours is a metric ****ton of hours, but 60 hours every week forever is still a lot of hours.

 

[libertyyne]

Family Practice Mean 2524 hours over a year.
https://www.amainsure.com/reports/work-life-profiles-of-todays-us-physician.html
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1105820

Family Practice at 2500 hours is roughly 50 hours a week for 50 weeks.

 

[FutureOncologist]

Family Practice Mean 2524 hours over a year.
https://www.amainsure.com/reports/work-life-profiles-of-todays-us-physician.html
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1105820

Family Practice at 2500 hours is roughly 50 hours a week for 50 weeks.

PM&R for the win

 

[efle]

Family Practice Mean 2524 hours over a year.
Family Practice at 2500 hours is roughly 50 hours a week for 50 weeks.

I actually find the top image reassuring, most physicians work 50 or less!

As for what I quoted, I think the 2524/year is the mean across all the physicians surveyed, not across FM

 

[NotYou20]

Uh, dude, anything over 50 hours is pretty brutal in a high-stress field. 80 hours is a metric ****ton of hours, but 60 hours every week forever is still a lot of hours.

Yep. During my summers from high school on I averaged about 60/wk and it was fine. But that was in stress free jobs without any real adult responsibilities. 60+/ week as an actual adult is going to mean serious sacrifices. You'd better enjoy your time at work

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Uh have you ever worked 80 hours a week? Clearly not if you think working an average of 12 hours per day (which would require working 6.7 days per week, by the way) isn't that bad.

 

[vendtex]

Highly dependent even in pediatrics depending on your practice type. Many outpatient practices have you seeing patients about 35-40 hours per week, but then you have to catch up on notes, phone calls, prior authorizations, prescription refills, billing... And that's if you're only outpatient... Many places also have light inpatient work, where you might see 2-5 patients in the morning before you see your clinic patients, and you may be on call every 5th day and have to answer lots of phone calls in the middle of the night. Some even have ER call for places with rural ERs. So it tends to be more like 50-60 hours per week. Which wears on you a lot over time. I work 60-70 hours per week on average in residency and I feel like I don't have a life outside because I'm either sleeping or catching up on chores (cleaning, cooking, laundry, seeing the dentist, grocery shopping, etc, etc) on my days off. I can't imagine how people with families do it.

and many rural pediatric jobs involve attending c-sections and high risk deliveries, sometimes level 2 nurseries, though if you are smart you turf anything that is going to take a lot of monitoring. Right now on average I work in the office from 830-500 M-F, but may have to round on one or two patients prior to that and if it's busy may spend about 1-2 hours charting on EMR from home. Most weekends off now but have voluntarily worked urgent care in the past on Sat and Sun 4 hours each. I could work less as compensation is RVU based but I prefer high volume.

 

[mvenus929]

Great insight, thanks for this! In your 3rd year schedule in your profile, how long are each of those blocks? And do you still see patients during research?

Generally, the blocks are a month long. Some are 2 weeks. I still have to attend my continuity clinic during my research month, and have call shifts throughout the week and cover the wards on weekends (so the wards seniors can have a break). And my research is purely clinical, so I'll be seeing lots of patients during that time, just not taking care of their problems. Outpatient months tend to be lighter, more like 40-50 hours per week, but it's still hard.

 

[LizzyM]

Many places still have buildings/apartments in the grounds or near by for residents to rent. Both academic centers that I live between have them

This is a necessity in areas where market rate rents are out of the range of middle income folks such as residents. In areas where housing is cheap relative to residents' wages, it is less likely.