For their study, researchers drew data from the 2004-2005 Community Tracking Survey, which includes a nationally representative sample of physicians. Their subsample included data on more than 6,300 physicians who worked 20-100 hours weekly and at least 26 weeks annually. Work hours include time spent in direct patient care, administrative duties and professional duties. Annual work hours for the 41 specialties studied were compared to family medicine as a baseline.
Results showed the three specialties with the most annual work hours were vascular surgery (888 annual hours more than family medicine), critical care internal medicine (689 hours more than family medicine) and neonatal and perinatal medicine (564 hours more than family medicine). Comparatively, the three specialties with the least annual work hours are pediatric emergency medicine (440 hours less than family medicine), occupational medicine (360 hours less than family medicine) and dermatology (346 hours less than family medicine).
Researchers concluded specialists who cared for patients with acute illnesses or those requiring intensive monitoring (in hospital settings) usually worked longer hours than specialists who cared for patients with more stable or chronic conditions (in ambulatory settings). Exceptions to this conclusion are physicians specializing in emergency or hospital medicine.
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