Home Poll A look at hospitalist part-timers

A look at hospitalist part-timers

Just under 10% of hospitalists report working part time

October 2012

Published in the October 2012 issue of Today’s Hospitalist

IN A SPECIALTY LIKE HOSPITAL MEDICINE, where the mean age of physicians hovers at just over 40, you would expect many to be raising families “and to work part time. But according to data from the 2011 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, just under 10% (9.8%) of hospitalists say they work part time. Here’s a look at who is currently working part time in hospital medicine, and who is planning to make the switch to part time in the near future.

Who’s working part time?
Look at the numbers of hospitalists working part time, and you’ll find nearly the same number of adult hospitalists and pediatric hospitalists.

The biggest difference in who is working part time, perhaps unsurprisingly, is by gender. While 7% of male hospitalists say they work part time, 14.9% of female hospitalists report working part time.

The number of part-timers is highest among hospitalists who work at universities and medical schools (14.1%), and lowest among hospitalists working for local hospitalist groups (6.3%). And while 14.2% of hospitalists in the Pacific say they work part time, that’s the case for only 6% of their colleagues in the Midwest.

Do you plan to switch?
When asked if they plan to switch to part time in the coming year, about 10% of hospitalists said “yes,” a percentage that was about the same for pediatric and adult hospitalists. The number was roughly the same among geographic regions, and the difference between male and female hospitalists was fairly small (12% for women, 9.3% for men).

Who plans to go part time? The number was higher for hospitalists working at teaching hospitals (13.4%) than hospitalists working at nonteaching hospitals (8.0%), for example. And more hospitalists working for large groups were thinking about going part time: 7.5% of physicians at groups with one to four hospitalists said they planned to make that change, compared to 13.7% of respondents working at groups with 10 to 15 hospitalists.

And more senior hospitalists say they intend to make the switch. While 8.6% of hospitalists with two years or less in the specialty plan to go part time, that number jumps to 15.2% for hospitalists with 11 or more years of experience.

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