On-call duties total over 7.5 days a month for 25% of surgeons

Patrick Sullivan

On-call data provide some of the most important information gathered in the CMA's annual Physician Resource Questionnaire (PRQ).

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One of the key findings to emerge in recent PRQs is the sheer volume of on-call hours faced by Canadian physicians, particularly surgical specialists. Results from the 2002 questionnaire indicate that 25% of surgical specialists reported more than 180 hours — 7.5 days — of shared call duties per month. The same holds true for 18% of medical specialists, an increase from 13% in 2001, and for 15% of GP/FPs (13%). Rural physicians who take call are also more likely to put in longer hours than their urban colleagues: 26% report over 180 shared call hours in an average month, compared with 17% of urban physicians.

Because the number of call hours can seriously hamper family and other activities, it is probably no coincidence that specialties with less onerous call schedules, such as dermatology and ophthalmology, tend to be oversubscribed in annual residency matches. Demand for specialties with heavy call duties, such as obstetrics or rural family medicine, point in the opposite direction.

Today, physicians aged 35–44 are most likely to take call (81%), while those 65 and older are least likely (45%). Eighty-six percent of surgical specialists take call, compared with 77% of medical specialists and 69% of GP/FPs. Those in rural practice also tend to see more patients during their call rotations, with 56% indicating that they attend more than 40 patients a month while on call, compared with 26% of physicians in urban practice. — Patrick Sullivan, CMAJ; data provided by Shelley Martin, Senior Analyst, Research, Policy and Planning Directorate, CMA