Abstract
BackgroundThe greater participation of women in medicine in recent years, and recent trends showing that doctors of both sexes work fewer hours than in the past, present challenges for medical workforce planning. In this study, we provide a detailed analysis of the characteristics of doctors who choose to work less-than-full-time (LTFT). We aimed to determine the influence of these characteristics on the probability of working LTFT.MethodsWe used data on working patterns obtained from long-term surveys of 10,866 UK-trained doctors. We analysed working patterns at 10 years post-graduation for doctors of five graduating cohorts, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2000 and 2002 (i.e. in the years 2003, 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2012, respectively). We used multivariable binary logistic regression models to examine the influence of a number of personal and professional characteristics on the likelihood of working LTFT in male and female doctors.ResultsAcross all cohorts, 42 % of women and 7 % of men worked LTFT. For female doctors, having children significantly increased the likelihood of working LTFT, with greater effects observed for greater numbers of children and for female doctors in non-primary care specialties (non-GPs). While >40 % of female GPs with children worked LTFT, only 10 % of female surgeons with children did so. Conversely, the presence of children had no effect on male working patterns. Living with a partner increased the odds of LTFT working in women doctors, but decreased the odds of LTFT working in men (independently of children). Women without children were no more likely to work LTFT than were men (with or without children). For both women and men, the highest rates of LTFT working were observed among GPs (~10 and 6 times greater than non-GPs, respectively), and among those not in training or senior positions.ConclusionsFamily circumstances (children and partner status) affect the working patterns of women and men differently, but both sexes respond similarly to the constraints of their clinical specialty and seniority. Thus, although women doctors comprise the bulk of LTFT workers, gender is just one of several determinants of doctors’ working patterns, and wanting to work LTFT is evidently not solely an issue for working mothers.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12960-016-0162-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
The greater participation of women in medicine in recent years, and recent trends showing that doctors of both sexes work fewer hours than in the past, present challenges for medical workforce planning
Not working, in the NHS We confine our main analyses, following this short section, to doctors working in the UK National Health Service (NHS; including those with honorary NHS contracts who were predominantly employed in clinical academic posts), because they constituted the vast majority of our dataset and are homogeneous in respect of NHS working conditions (91 %; 9868/10,866; Table 1)
The 998 doctors working outside the NHS comprised 624 (5.7 %) who were working in medicine outside the UK and 291 (2.7 %) who were working in non-NHS UK medicine, with 54 (0.5 %) in non-medical employment and 28 (0.3 %) not in employment
Summary
The greater participation of women in medicine in recent years, and recent trends showing that doctors of both sexes work fewer hours than in the past, present challenges for medical workforce planning. The persistence of traditional gender roles in society, in which women undertake the bulk of family caring responsibilities, means that female doctors typically work fewer hours than their male counterparts: this pattern transcends medicine [1,2,3]. Such gendered working patterns are important considerations for medical workforce planners, given women’s increasing representation in the medical workforce [2]. Authors of some studies have indicated that this move to reduced working hours for doctors represents a cultural shift in valuing time over money and prioritising work-life balance above career progression [7, 10]
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