Abstract
Long work hours among physicians is a worldwide issue in the healthcare arena. Previous studies have largely focused on the work hours of resident physicians rather than those of attending physicians. The purpose of this study was to investigate total work hours and the composition of those work hours for attending physicians across different hospital settings and across different medical specialties through a nationwide survey. This included examining differences in physician workload and its composition with respect to different hospital characteristics, and grouping medical specialties according to the work similarities. A cross-sectional self-reported nationwide survey was conducted from June to September of 2018, and the two questionnaires were distributed to all accredited hospitals in Taiwan. The number of physician work hours in different types of duty shifts were answered by medical specialty in each surveyed hospital. Each medical specialty in a hospital filled only one response for its attending physicians. The findings reveal that the average total work hours per week of an attending physician is around 69.1 h, but the total work hours and their composition of different duty shifts varied among hospital accreditation levels, geographic locations, emergency care responsibilities, and medical specialties. Because of the variance in the number and composition of attending physicians’ work hours, adjusting physician work hours to a reasonable level will be a major challenge for health authority and hospital managers.
Highlights
Long work hours among physicians is a worldwide issue in the healthcare arena
Three-quarters of hospitals were located in urban areas, and for those hospitals the participation rate was around 34–37%
The average number and composition of weekly work hours varied for physicians working in hospitals with different characteristics and in different medical specialties
Summary
Long work hours among physicians is a worldwide issue in the healthcare arena. Previous studies have largely focused on the work hours of resident physicians rather than those of attending physicians. On-call duty is an important factor contributing to the variation because the demand for urgent services differs substantially among different specialties (e.g., dermatology vs obstetrics/gynecology) Both the practice setting and nature of a physician’s specialty affect the work hours of attending physicians. The purpose of this study was to investigate total work hours and the composition of those work hours of attending physicians across different hospital settings and across different medical specialties through a nationwide survey
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