Working part-time had never once crossed my mind when I had envisioned my career, but there it was: a three-day-a-week offer, nothing else. ![]() When the freeze unfroze, there was only a part-time spot available. My career “choice” came about with more bureaucratic banality-a New York City budget crisis that caused a hiring freeze just as I was poised to begin my academic medical career. ![]() Unlike most of my colleagues, I did not become part-time phsysician as a result of children. Could it be the part-time physician be seen as is another type of clinician-laboring alongside hospitalists, intensivists, pulmonologists, and nephrologists. But should part-time medicine be solely viewed as the hodge-podge mess that is leftover when women cut their hours to have children? Perhaps part-time medicine is its own entity. Ĭonventional wisdom has it that most physicians choose part-time work so that they can balance work with family, and that these physicians are women. Academic physicians view part-timer faculty members as less committed, though they concede that part-timers ought to be considered for promotion and even given extra time, if needed, to achieve tenure. īut, not surprisingly, part-time academic physicians fall behind t heir full-time colleagues in terms of promotion and tenure. The small studies that have been done on clinical outcomes suggest that part-time physicians are more efficient and productive, achieving better outcomes in cancer screening and diabetes management than their full-time counterparts. Part-time physicians report less burnout, higher satisfaction, and a greater sense of control than full-time physicians. Patient trust and satisfaction with part-time doctors appear to be similar to that with full-time doctors. Is there anything inherently wrong with working in medicine part-time?īetween 10% and 20% of doctors define themselves as “part-time,”, , and pediatrics leads the pack for specialties conducive to part-time work. When this happens, I feel terribly guilty about being a part-timer, but I often wonder whether this guilt is misplaced. If my patients need medical attention on those days, they have to be seen by in our walk-in clinic, or to go to the emergency room if it is after-hours or on weekends. I don’t go to the hospital, don’t check my voicemail, though I do carry my beeper for emergencies. During my “on” days, I work furiously like my colleagues, seeing all of my patients, squeezing in anyone who calls or shows up, supervising residents and students, following up on test results, returning phone calls, filling out medical forms, writing letters for disability, housing, school and work.īut on my “off” days, I am officially off. It is at these times that being a part-time doctor feels I’m somehow shirking the Hippocratic Oath: I’m not there for my patients all the time like a doctor should. Even though my voicemail greeting clearly states-in two languages-which days I’m not in the clinic (and specifically states that I won’t be getting messages on these days and to please dial the following number to get immediate attention, etc) it is not unusual for me to find messages with real urgency waiting on my machine when I get back to the office several days later. If Sharon had been less educated or didn’t speak English or was homebound, an untreated urinary infection could have progressed to pyelonephritis, even sepsis. ![]() Although I later learned that she’d obtained appropriate treatment from her university health services, I still felt terrible. I didn’t hear back from Sharon and felt worse. All of these were true statements, but as I recounted them before Sharon’s answering machine they sounded pathetic. I apologized for not getting her message sooner, explaining that the clinic was closed for a federal holiday on Thursday, and that Fridays and Mondays were the days that I didn’t work at the clinic. ![]() With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I quickly dialed Sharon’s number and unfortunately got an answering machine. I’m having a lot of burning when I urinate and wonder if I should be on antibiotics.” “It’s Sharon S.,” the next message played, “calling on Friday. “This is Sharon S.,” the first message played, “calling on Thursday. on Tuesday morning and I listened to my phone messages in my office.
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