How Many Hours Per Week Do Doctors Work?

We’ve all heard that doctors spend countless hours studying in medical school and 80+ hours per week working in residency. But how many hours do doctors work after they complete their training?

On average, doctors work 51.40 hours per week after residency in the United States. The majority of doctors work between 41 and 60 hours per week, per the physician’s foundation 2018 survey. This is a decrease in the number of hours worked by doctors in previous years.

However, this survey doesn’t account for variations in specialty, patterns and more. Continue reading to dig deeper into doctor’s work hours and understand why they work more than the typical 40 hour work week.

Do Doctors Work 9-5?

Every two years, The Physicians Foundation has published their Survey of American Physicians. This is a broad survey that gets sent to every physician with an E-Mail address on record with the American Medical Associated. In 2018 a total of 8,774 survey responses responded, sharing details about their practice patterns. Including how many hours they work.

According to the results, the majority of doctors work anywhere from 41-60 hours per week with the average doctor working ~51.40 hours per week. You can see the exact 2018 results recreated here:

Hours	2018 Hours Per Week Results
0-20	4.9%
21-30	5.0%
31-40	11.7%
41-50	24.1%
51-60	26.1%
61-70	15.7%
71-80	7.8%
80+	4.7%
Average	51.40

That’s a little more than the typical American 9-5 job.

But it doesn’t tell the whole story. Maybe you’ve met a doctor who works in clinic 4 days a week 9AM to 5PM. You might also have heard of doctors working 7 days on/7 days off. Or other working only 2-3 days per week!

It’s easy to try and cluster all doctors into one group, but the truth is that actual hours per week worked varies significantly by practice patterns. Here’s a few examples:

• An ob/gyn working 10 nights per month.
• A hospitalist working 7 day on, 7 days off
• A primary care doctor working 9-5, 4 days per week plus one Saturday call day per month.
• An emergency physician working 12 shifts per month

Those examples are from from physicians I personally know. As you can see, our practice patterns vary significantly!

That’s because each specialty in medicine found its own way to cover the 24/7 nature of medicine. Yes, it’s possible for a primary care doctor to work 9-5 four days a week when they only see patients by appointment. But it’s a lot more difficulty for an ob/gyn to who’s responsible for delivering babies. Or an ER doctor treating heart attacks at 2AM.

Medicine is simply an always on kind of job. Even though the primary care doctor works easy hours, their patients still need medical care all the time. So most primary care doctors still have an after hours doctor on call or at least a nursing line to refer patients to the ER.

Medical emergencies simply don’t wait for anyone, so doctors have to find a way for someone to always be there to treat them.

Then there’s the issue of continuity. While it may be easy for an ER doctor to see brand new patients every day because their role is to focus on emergencies, it’s a lot more difficult for a hospitalist to do the same. Every week, they take care of the same panel, or team, of patients. That’s because it’s a lot more difficult to track Mr. Smith’s progress if you only see him 3 days a week rather than seeing him every day.

And, of course, there’s also the fact that doctors are people, too. Most of us don’t want to work every weekend and every holiday. So we all devised our own way to share the burden.

As a result, you get a few recurring practice patterns by specialty:

• Emergency physicians work shifts, covering a mix of days and nights and averaging around 120 hours per month (or 30 hours per week)
• Hospitalists work 7 on 7 off to maintain continuity with their patients and split weekends.
• Nocturnists are hired to cover nights, and typically get paid more or work less than day walkers. .
• Primary care works 4-5 days per week, but set up a call system for after-hours emergencies.
• Ob/Gyn doctors typically work in a group with clinic plus call or can work in a system with specialized nocturnists (doctors who only work night shifts)

It’s pretty difficult to fit doctors into the traditional 9-5.

What Are the 9-5 Specialties?

Of course, some doctors do work traditional bankers hours. These docs typically specialize in areas without emergencies. Or at least if they do, find a way to hire someone to cover those less-desirable hours.

Not everyone wants to be the superhero doctor putting stents in at midnight, delivering babies around the clock, or spending 12+ hours transplanting livers. Some docs just want to treat their patients and still have dinner with their families. And maybe avoid those nasty nights and weekends.

If that’s something that appeals to you, here’s a list of the most common 9-5 specialties:

• Internal Medicine/Primary Care
• Family Medicine
• Pediatrics
• Dermatology
• Ophthalmology
• Psychiatry
• Pathology
• Pain Medicine
• Wound Care
• Obesity Medicine
• Rheumatology
• Allergy and Immunology

Should You Pick A Lifestyle Specialty?

It’s tough to tell someone that they should or shouldn’t pick one of the “9-5” or “lifestyle specialties”. But I can say with absolute certainty that you should pick a specialty that has the lifestyle you want.

Being a doctor is an interesting profession. It’s one that you will absolutely spend your entire life mastering. It could be a part of your life, or it could be your defining feature.

Dont believe me? Just look at the survey. Sure, the majority of doctors work 41-60 hours per week, but that’s just the middle of the bell curve. Over 28% of all the doctors surveyed worked more than that!

If you absolutely love performing open heart surgery and prolonging the lives of your patients, you should be a Cardiothoracic surgeon. If you want to manually remove clots from stroke patients’ brains and coil their aneurysms, be a neuroradiologist. If medicine is your passion, you should do that.

If you want to be the guy who works in clinic 4 days a week, that’s ok, too.

For some people, medicine is their all-encompassing passion. For others, it’s their job.

How Many Hours Does The Average Doctor Work?

I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to be that type of superhero doctor. That’s not to say anything against the ones who do. It just wasn’t for me. Even as a medical student, I knew that in addition to being a doctor, I wanted to have a life outside of medicine. Time to spend with family for dinner and making it to soccer games and all that good stuff.

When I was a medical student, I looked into the “lifestyle specialties”. They’re more commonly referred to as “The ROAD to happiness!”. Radiology, Opthalmology, Anesthesiology, and Dermatology. My year, this expanded a bit to the E-ROAD, adding Emergency Medicine.

So, for that, and a number of other reasons (including the fact that I really liked the field), I went into Emergency Medicine.

Now I work a minimum of 132 hours per month, or 33 hours per week. That’s because, as an ER doctor, I work with a group of other doctors to cover the department 24/7. We initially split shifts evenly, with some docs deciding they wanted more, some less. Some preferring nights. Some days. A schedule I hope I can maintain for many years.

I also say minimum because the shift work nature of emergency medicine means there’s usually a shift or two to pick up every month if you want one. Every now and then, usually depending on Mrs. Average Doctor’s schedule, I’ll pick one up. If I really wanted to, I could pick up a bunch (like my attending in medical school who worked 30 shifts per month for two months to buy that $150,000 car)

Altogether, that puts me a little below the average in the Survey of American Physicians. Which is nice, because it means I have time to write this blog for you.