Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

What are typical hours working in Family Medicine?


brady23

Recommended Posts

Hi all,

I was wondering what are the typical hours working in Family Medicine? (are you expected to work weekends, evenings, how much vacation time is okay to take?)

For example, on one hand, I want to take about 8 weeks of vacation per year, not work on weekends/evenings, but on the other hand, I know you have an obligation to patients as well. It probably isn't realistic to work 9-5 Mon-Fri right and take 2 weeks off every 3 months or so? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your "obligation to patients" in reality is quite minimal.  It would be borderline absurd if GPs couldn't take 2 week holidays...their patients are covered by another physician in a group practice, or they go to a walk in.  I know many family docs that work way less than you describe.  Some don't work Fridays for example.  I know one that literally takes one out of every 3 weeks off to go to his cottage.  

Your taking time off is limited by the fact that you wont make any money those weeks.  Otherwise there is no reason to worry.  You can work as much or as little as you want. 

Edit: and working weekends is rare, its more if you want to or if you join a walk in clinic that is open Saturdays.  Most don't work weekends or evenings.  The ones you see/hear from in med school are by and large more intense and are more likely to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

it depends on your setup and clinic you work at. 

Just remember, that patients often also work during the day and while our own families are important etc, try to throw a bone sometimes and do an evening or weekend shift.  Many of the clinics i've seen usually have saturday shifts and sometimes sunday too. But if you don't want to, you can easily find places that fit your needs. Also depends on how test results etc are handled at the clinic, and if you personally review them or its shared burden etc.

Most provincial colleges also have the expectation that as a Family doctor, you are "available" to your patients after hours. This means, that if you don't have clinic hours after 5pm, that you have a call service amongst your practice so that your patients can reach a physician. Or that you pay a call service, so your patients have someone to reach. While most doctors, especially those that are graduating more recently in the last 10 years, don't really follow this (most just say on their answering machine to go to the ER if its an emergency, which for all intensive purposes is not meeting this expectaiton), there should be some sort of system set up to be professional.  Even though it is a professional expectation, the college doesn't really clamp down on this at all.  It costs a heck of a lot more for that patient to go waste everyones time in the ER. 

(http://www.cpsa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Tips_for_Meeting_Continuity_of_Care_Standard.pdf)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a family physician myself I am working anywhere from 5-7 days a week by choice because I want to make money to pay off debt and buy a house. I am part of a large call group, where I am on call for around 1-2 weeks out of the year, but most are these are very short phone calls. I work at least one weekday evening a week and one weekend every other week so that patients can come to me during non-work hours.

Theoretically, I can take as much time off as I want. I have 4 weeks of vacation a year without the need to find a locum because the other physicians in the clinic can cover it. If I'm taking more than 4 weeks I will have to find a locum.

It's important that as a family physician you follow up and be available to your patients. That is part of the relationship between you and your patients and you should be a reliable and reasonably accessible resource for them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
On 2018-01-17 at 8:29 PM, brady23 said:

Hi all,

I was wondering what are the typical hours working in Family Medicine? (are you expected to work weekends, evenings, how much vacation time is okay to take?)

For example, on one hand, I want to take about 8 weeks of vacation per year, not work on weekends/evenings, but on the other hand, I know you have an obligation to patients as well. It probably isn't realistic to work 9-5 Mon-Fri right and take 2 weeks off every 3 months or so? 

8 weeks off a year and no weekends or evenings? This is better hours than anyone in the whole world has at their job!   I mean it’s that what teachers work? It’s far less than a business job.  Seems very unrealistic unless you want to be paid like a 100k

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Aconitase said:

8 weeks off a year and no weekends or evenings? This is better hours than anyone in the whole world has at their job!   I mean it’s that what teachers work? It’s far less than a business job.  Seems very unrealistic unless you want to be paid like a 100k

This is pretty typical for several family doctors that I know, and who make somewhere between 125-175k per year after overhead expenses. After early working years, once I have my home and all my school and start up debt paid off, a net 100k per year would go pretty far. (Way further than the salary I lived off for years in my previous life). Sounds great to me!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Mithril said:

I know two docs that I worked under while in residency that made $200k/year after overhead while taking 2 months off out of the year and no weekends, just a 5 day work week.

It almost seems not fair. If you go into medicine you should want to work hard. Not take 2 months off and not work evenings and weekends 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Aconitase said:

It almost seems not fair. If you go into medicine you should want to work hard. Not take 2 months off and not work evenings and weekends 

Why is that unfair? Just because you take a few extra weeks off, or limit your hours to the day time, that does not necessarily mean that you don’t also work hard. And it doesn’t mean you’re not taking excellent care of your patients. Personally, I am not particularly interested as a patient in having a doctor who works themself insanely hard. I’d worry they would be both more judgemental and more prone to make mistakes because they’re overworked.

Especially when it comes to my everyday care, I’d much rather have a doctor who understands the importance of balance between working hard and taking care of yourself and who actually demonstrates that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, frenchpress said:

Why is that unfair? Just because you take a few extra weeks off, that does not necessarily mean that you don’t also work. Personally, I am not particularly interested as a patient in having a doctor which works themself insanely hard just because they feel like that’s what people are suppose to do. I’d worry they would be both more judgemental and more prone to make mistakes because they’re overworked.

Especially when it comes to my everyday care, I’d much rather have a doctor who not only understands the importance of balance between working hard and taking care of yourself, but actually demonstrates that.

Right but this is crazy. You are working less hard than a business person even or someone at Tim Hortons. 

 

We we are not talking about working 100 hours a week here. This is 40 with 8 weeks off. That’s insane no one gets that. I just don’t get why you need 8 weeks off with no weekends and evenings. if you went into medicine, where you know you are supposed to work more than the average person, not less. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Aconitase said:

Right but this is crazy. You are working less hard than a business person even or someone at Tim Hortons. 

 

We we are not talking about working 100 hours a week here. This is 40 with 8 weeks off. That’s insane no one gets that. I just don’t get why you need 8 weeks off with no weekends and evenings. if you went into medicine, where you know you are supposed to work more than the average person, not less. 

Medicine is hard and interesting work that comes with a lot of responsibility. That does not have to translate into more ‘hours’, nor should it in all cases. It is a huge logical fallacy to assert that more hours worked necessarily translates into being a better and more effective worker. And you risk doing a huge disservice to patients if you assume that has to be true and then completely burn yourself out.

I am not saying people shouldn’t work a lot of hours if they like it and feel they can do it safely and effectively. I am just saying that being a good doctor != working more than everyone else in society all the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Aconitase said:

Right but this is crazy. You are working less hard than a business person even or someone at Tim Hortons. 

 

We we are not talking about working 100 hours a week here. This is 40 with 8 weeks off. That’s insane no one gets that. I just don’t get why you need 8 weeks off with no weekends and evenings. if you went into medicine, where you know you are supposed to work more than the average person, not less. 

This is exactly the kind of toxic attitude that is all too prevalent in medicine. There's more to life than just working, and medicine is ultimately just a job, yes a special one but still just a job. If someone wants to work 30 hours a week with no call that is absolutely their decision to make, there is no "supposed to work more than the average person."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, futurefamilydoc said:

This is exactly the kind of toxic attitude that is all too prevalent in medicine. There's more to life than just working, and medicine is ultimately just a job, yes a special one but still just a job. If someone wants to work 30 hours a week with no call that is absolutely their decision to make, there is no "supposed to work more than the average person."

I am sorry I don’t agree with this. When you applied to medical school no doubt if you said you wanted to work 30 hours and not do any evenings or weekends they would have never let you in. 

 

I am am not saying you need to kill your self. But is it too much to as you to work full time? Otherwise that spot would have been spent on someone that was going to serve the public full time, isnt it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, Aconitase said:

I am sorry I don’t agree with this. When you applied to medical school no doubt if you said you wanted to work 30 hours and not do any evenings or weekends they would have never let you in. 

 

I am am not saying you need to kill your self. But is it too much to as you to work full time? Otherwise that spot would have been spent on someone that was going to serve the public full time, isnt it?

It sounds like you went into medicine in order to work a lot, and this is how you feel you can best serve your patients. And that’s totally valid.

I think people who apply to medical school should absolutely be aiming to and excited to serve their community and society. But there are other important metrics to consider here besides ‘hours’. What about patient satisfaction? Quality of care? Physician-job satisfaction and turnover? Etc. If you can achieve these things in whatever number of hours you choose to work, why isn’t that good enough? 

I’ve worked enough in industries where it’s standard to martyr yourself on the altar of your field (be it capitalism or health care or whatever) to have seen again and again how more hours does not guarantee better outcomes. A lot of people who work long hours are producing crap. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Aconitase said:

I am sorry I don’t agree with this. When you applied to medical school no doubt if you said you wanted to work 30 hours and not do any evenings or weekends they would have never let you in. 

 

I am am not saying you need to kill your self. But is it too much to as you to work full time? Otherwise that spot would have been spent on someone that was going to serve the public full time, isnt it?

I'm sure many of us had very different ideas of what medicine and our careers would be like at the time we applied compared to now, we are allowed to change our minds. And what an admission committee member wants to hear definitely is not what's best for each individual person as a whole. Some like you may want to work more, some want to work less. I have already seen far too many tired, on the verge of burning out residents and physicians thanks to the hours they have to work. I have also met physicians happily working 30 hours a week and dedicating the rest of their time to hobbies, raising a family, i.e. the things that for many people are what are most important to them, and are still able to provide quality care to their patients, and are still contributing a great deal to public service. We only get one life after all.

Just because the medical school system places a limit on spots does not mean people are obligated to work a certain amount to pay back some kind of debt to society. Over an entire career the work a physician does, even working less than full time, will be more than enough to pay back the resources used to train them. Heck I think the system would be better off training more physicians with smaller workloads expected of them, we would have far greater happiness in the profession, likely far less burnout and mental health issues among physicians as well, but that's debatable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...