Who's doing what? Time spent on committee and administrative work

Mark O. Baerlocher; Allan S. Detsky

doi:10.1503/cmaj.060174

According to data from the 2004 CFPC/CMA/RCPSC National Physician Survey, physicians in the fields of community medicine, microbiology and infectious diseases, hematology, emergency medicine and medical oncology contributed the greatest number of hours per week on average working on health facility committees and conducting administrative work (Fig. 1). Respondents whose specialties were dermatology, ophthalmology, diagnostic radiology, rheumatology and family medicine contributed the fewest hours.

Fig. 1: Mean number of hours per week that respondents reported they spent on health facility committees and adminstrative work, by specialty (numbers in parentheses are number of respondents). Source: 2004 CFPC/CMA/RCPSC National Physician Survey. *Includes CCFP and non-CCFP family physicians.

When expressed as a percentage of the total number of hours spent by all physicians on either committee or administrative work, the largest proportions were contributed by family physicians (40.3%), psychiatrists (6.2%), pediatricians (5.2%) and general internists (5.0%). The smallest proportions were contributed by immunologists and allergists (0.2%), nuclear medicine specialists (0.3%), dermatologists (0.3%) and rheumatologists (0.4%). (The ranking of these values by specialty differs from that of the number of hours per week because of the different number of physicians in Canada in each specialty.)