Which specialty offers the best work-life balance for physicians? A new survey has tried to quantify what the word “lifestyle” means for physicians by ranking factors that contribute to work-life balance.
Marit Health compared survey responses from more than 24,000 physicians, rating factors like hours worked per week, schedule quality and call “burden.” Analysts then calculated lifestyle rankings for 36 specialties, with a score of 1 considered average.
The specialty that came out on top was preventive medicine, which received a score of 1.5 on Marit’s lifestyle index. Rounding out the top five were dermatology, with a score of 1.44, and allergy/immunology (1.39), rheumatology (1.34) and psychiatry (1.33).
Hospital medicine came in at No. 27 on Marit’s list with a lifestyle score of 0.81. Emergency medicine physicians gave their specialty a score of 0.95, coming in at No. 19 on the list.
Here’s a look at the factors like work hours, call schedule and paid time off that went into Marit’s lifestyle rankings.
Hours worked per week
When it came to physician work hours, Marit found an average work week of 45.6 hours across the 36 specialties on its ranking of work-life balance.
Preventive medicine physicians reported working an average of 40.5 hours per week, which was on the low end on the report, and a factor in its top spot on the lifestyle ranking. No. 2 on the list, dermatology, logged an average work week of 38.8 hours, the second shortest work week on the list.
At the bottom of the lifestyle ranking list, neurosurgery averaged 56.6 hours per week. That was the longest work week of the specialties surveyed.
Hospital medicine averaged 45.2 work hours per week in Marit’s data. Emergency medicine averaged 35.5 hours per week.
Call schedule
“Call burden,” as Marit described it, was another key factor in work-life balance for physicians. The lowest-ranking specialties tended to be those that respond to emergencies, take around-the-clock call or cover nights. They included neurosurgery (#36), general surgery (#35), critical care (#34), ob-gyn (#33) and anesthesiology (#32).
Call burden had a powerful impact on the lifestyle scores of specialties. While emergency medicine had the lowest average workweeks of any specialty on the survey—35.5 hours—the specialty’s low score on schedule—0.61—helped drive it down to No. 19 on Marit’s overall lifestyle ranking. (An average score for call burden in Marit’s data was 1.0.)
As Marit said in its analysis: “Thirty-five hours of nights, weekends and rotating shifts produces a very different experience than 35 hours of predictable daytime work.”
When it came to call burden, hospital medicine received a ranking of 0.97. Emergency medicine saw a score of 0.86.
Paid time off
Marit found that among the 36 specialties on its list, physicians received an average of five weeks of paid time off. For hospital medicine, the number was 3.9 weeks.
ED physicians reported the lowest amount of paid time off—3.7 weeks, tied for last with oral/maxillofacial surgery.
Top five specialties for lifestyle
Preventive medicine: 1.50
Dermatology: 1.44
Allergy and immunology: 1.39
Rheumatology: 1.34
Psychiatry: 1.33
Bottom five specialties for lifestyle
Anesthesiology: 0.64
OB-GYN: 0.64
Critical care: 0.64
Surgery: 0.61
Neurosurgery: 0.50
