How many hours per year do you work?

[FIREshrink]

For 'full time' docs, how many hours do you work per year in your 'doctor' jobs? For the purposes of this thread I'll say that leadership, research, clinical care, consulting, etc, all counts - but I'm going to exclude side businesses and passive income like... blogging. Sorry WCI and PhysicianonFIRE. However I would include your work running, for instance, your medical practice, a nursing home, a surgery center, etc.

Include all the time you spend driving around from site to site, but not your time driving to and from work at the beginning and end of the work day. Think about all your PTO. Include any call where you are actually working, as opposed to just carrying a live pager. So if you are called in for a procedure or spend hours on the phone while on call, count that - but don't count the 15 hours you were at home sleeping and playing basketball with your kids just because you had a pager on.

Your lunch/break time is countable, assuming none of us are taking 4 hour lunches regularly.

If i'm missing some other scenarios, chime in.

I work 4 days per week, 8-6 on average. Some days longer, some shorter. And 1 weekend per month which is about 16 hours of active work. Call one weeknight per week but so light that I'm not even going to count it. From the above deduct 8 weeks of holidays and PTO though I don't usually take all of it. I get to 1950 hours.

[poll id = "69"]

[sealsmith217]

I think I average about 1750 clinical hours if you include time spent completing documentation and disposition of last few patients. My work as an EM doc is productivity based so I don't like to sign out many patients at end of shift. This doesn't include attending board meetings, hospital committee meetings, or residency lectures/activities but I don't consider those as "work".

[Steve]

5 days a week, 7-5.  Weeknight call 2-3/month and stay until near 9pm.  13 weekends a year, at hospital at least 22 hours during that weekend.  8 weeks off a year.  Some evening administrative meetings on top of that.  What is lunch?

So I get 2638 hours.

As per your rules, that doesn't include call time that I'm not at the hospital.  So getting 10 phone calls after I get home on call between 9pm and 6am doesn't count as work?  Add to this the risk of having to emergently come back in during this time.  I know some of our administrators don't think of it as work.  But it does make the next day crappy.

[The White Coat Investor]

Let's see. 12 shifts a month at 8 hours per shift x 12 months = 1152. Let's add another 10 hours a month for cleanup after shifts and admin duties and we'll call it 1272. I put the poll on the front page of the site, so hopefully you'll get more than a few answers this week.

[FIREshrink]

Steve wrote:

5 days a week, 7-5.  Weeknight call 2-3/month and stay until near 9pm.  13 weekends a year, at hospital at least 22 hours during that weekend.  8 weeks off a year.  Some evening administrative meetings on top of that.  What is lunch?

So I get 2638 hours.

As per your rules, that doesn’t include call time that I’m not at the hospital.  So getting 10 phone calls after I get home on call between 9pm and 6am doesn’t count as work?  Add to this the risk of having to emergently come back in during this time.  I know some of our administrators don’t think of it as work.  But it does make the next day crappy.

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i would definitely count 10 calls per call shift.

[retinadoc]

7a-5p M-F = 50 hours/wk. 52 weeks - 5 weeks PTO - 1 week of holidays = 46 weeks. 50 x 46 = 2300

Call is 1 week in 6 -- its not too bad, let's call it 100 hours total for the year.

 

2400 hours

[DarrVao777]

Monday = 8-5
Tuesday = 8-5
Wednesday = 8-5
Thursday = 8-12
Friday = 8-12

Total = 35 hours per week

0 weekends
0 weeknights
0 call

8 weeks PTO
1 week of holidays?

43 weeks of work X 35 hours/week = ~1505 hours per year

I'll round down and say 1500 hours/year since I am known for taking rather long lunches

I thought my gig was good. I'm surprised to see WCI's clinical hours so low. Is 12 shifts/month considered light or standard in EM?

[redsand]

FIREshrink wrote:us are taking 4 hour lunches regularly.

I work 4 days per week, 8-6 on average. Some days longer, some shorter. And 1 weekend per month which is about 16 hours of active work. Call one weeknight per week but so light that I’m not even going to count it. From the above deduct 8 weeks of holidays and PTO though I don’t usually take all of it. I get to 1950 hours.

 

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What type of job do you have where you get 8 weeks off?  I suppose holidays would amount to about a week and a half, maybe 2 weeks.

[The White Coat Investor]

Full time is twelves 12s or 15 8s. Pretty standard. It sounds like because you haven't thought it through completely (not that it's general surgery hours or anything.)

Think of it this way. Sure, it's 15 shifts a month. If you work in a clinic on weekdays, perhaps that's 21 days a month. But there are 10 holidays during the year. Emergency docs don't get those. So that's more like 20 days a month. And perhaps you get 4 weeks of vacation off. There are 20 more days you're not working. So now we're down to like 18 days a month. Now don't forget 1-2 DOMAs a month. That's when you go to work at 10 pm and work until 6 am. One of those days is technically a "day off". Which one is it? So now we're down to 16 days a month. Really not all that different, especially when you consider the emergency doc likely didn't take any lunch and maybe not any bathroom breaks due to the pace of work.

But is it going to compare to someone doing a 72 hour call over the weekend? No, of course not.

At any rate, I consider myself 3/4 time.

[DarrVao777]

redsand wrote:

FIREshrink wrote:us are taking 4 hour lunches regularly.

I work 4 days per week, 8-6 on average. Some days longer, some shorter. And 1 weekend per month which is about 16 hours of active work. Call one weeknight per week but so light that I’m not even going to count it. From the above deduct 8 weeks of holidays and PTO though I don’t usually take all of it. I get to 1950 hours.

 

Click to expand…

What type of job do you have where you get 8 weeks off?  I suppose holidays would amount to about a week and a half, maybe 2 weeks.

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I'm going to guess from the OP's name that it's psychiatry

[uptoolate]

I was at about 2000 hours for the last 10 years of my career but was down to maybe 1300 for the last year once I had stopped night call completely.  For my first 10 years I was just over 3000 hours/year not including long range on-call 1 in 2.

[pulmdoc]

20 weeks x7 days x12 hour shifts=1680 hours, plus ~90 clinics 8 hours plus ~100 hours/year doing procedures separately=2500 hours.

[SValleyMD]

I'm 5 days a week from 7-5 with no lunch (10 hours a day) plus q4 nights and weekends. Most call nights go in for admits and/or procedures (stemi's). Sleep 2-5 hours. Weekend call is usually 5-10 hours a day plus nights.

Last year I took 10-15 workdays off and also did 6 weekend locum shifts out of state (did Hospitalist locums which pays better than cardiology locums)

It was my first year out and im 100% production. Was able to hit 14k rvus

I'm doing that for this year and next, then taking the employed salary and 12 weeks off a year.

[CM]

Way too many, apparently: 2661.94 hours.

Per the rules, I didn't count call time with a "live pager." (Also didn't try to estimate time spent in direct pt care when on call from home.) However, I'd like to object to the rule.

Some physicians may carry on with their lives carefree while carrying live pager. Not me. I can never unwind. I'm working (or suffering the stress of work) the entire time. I don't mind 12 hour days, so long as I can leave it behind when I return home.

[HLM]

I'm a peds hospitalist so it's all shift work and the shift length varies and the number of shifts/week varies for each doc. But a full FTE is considered 1800 hours a year which seems very, very reasonable to me.

The only downside is regularly working weekends and holidays. I'm a nocturnist so I work only nights and that is my preference but most others in our group find working the night shifts to be painful too, especially flipping back and forth between doing days and nights.