Saturday, 27 February 2021

Physician work-life balance and burnout: What has changed in the last 40 years?

 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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