Work-Time Distribution of Physicians at a German University Hospital

Abstract

Deutsches Ärzteblatt International | Dtsch Arztebl Int 2017; 114: 705-11 16. Bee PE, Richards DA, Loftus SJ, et al.: Mapping nursing activity in acute inpatient mental healthcare settings. J Ment Health 2006; 15: 217-26. KEY MESSAGES• Inpatient care accounted for 53% of physicians' work-time. A total of 34% was spent on outpatient care and 13% on other activities, e.g., waiting, moving from place to place, and breaks.• Overall, 46% of working time on the wards in the participating departments was spent in direct contact with patients (e.g., rounds, operations, obtaining blood samples).• One third of inpatient work-time was occupied by indirect care, i.e., work in connection with particular patients but not in their presence (e.g., treatment documentation, discharge letters).• The departments of ophthalmology, dermatology, gynecology, pediatrics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, orthopedics and trauma surgery, and psychiatry and psychotherapy of the Medical Center-University of Freiburg took part in the study.• The knowledge that they were taking part in a study may have altered the physicians' behavior.

The Revival of the Doctor–Patient Relationship: An Analysis of Doctors’ Work Distribution

“…Wolff et al analyzed the work distribution of physicians in seven different departments of the Medical Center-University of Freiburg, by means of multimoment self-reported work sampling, in which the participants are prompted to note where they are and what they are doing by signals emitted by a portable device (1). Their results show that direct patient contact (e.g., blood sampling, ward rounds, and surgical interventions) accounts for 24% of the working time of all hospital doctors (including senior staff and those working with outpatients) and 46% for those working with inpatients.…”

Using the bootstrapping method to verify whether hospital physicians have different h-indexes regarding individual research achievement

“…In studies of hospital physicians’ work-time, [ 8 ] 46% of inpatient working time was spent in direct contact with patients. More than half of inpatient work-time was occupied by tasks carried out away from patients.…”

Predicting patient outcomes in psychiatric hospitals with routine data: a machine learning approach

“…Previous research has often included a broad set of medical, psychometric and sociodemographic variables of which many should usually not be available at admission of patients at many hospitals [3,28]. High administrative workload in clinical staff and overall time constraints are prevalent in many health care systems [29]. Therefore, required feature variables should be routinely available at the point of decision making without further curation.…”