In this Special Feature conversation, retired doctor and public health professional Dr. Hilary Guite discusses her experience of working as a newly qualified doctor with her friend, who is 2 years out of medical school.
Hilary: “There are only 168 hours in a week, and my worst [week] was 135 hours. My best were 93. How many hours do you do on average now?”
Fred: “Quite a bit less: I work about 40 hours a week of standard non-on-call shifts and then about 8 hours on call on top of that, which averages out to about 48 hours a week. About half the average when you started.”
I am talking to a friend of mine who qualified as a doctor nearly 40 years after I did. We are comparing our working conditions as junior doctors —the years after qualifying as a doctor and before becoming a consultant or attending physician.
In the course of our conversation, we explored how and why changes in working conditions might have impacted on work-life balance, burnout, and suicides among doctors.
While our experiences are very different, high levels of burnout among doctors continue to be a significant problem.
Source: Medical News Today
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