Practices must cope as more physicians work part-time hours

The trend could impact the culture of overwork but squeeze doctor supply.

By Myrle Croasdale, AMNews staff. Oct. 21, 2002.

Pediatrician Jennifer Shu, MD, wants it all: career, family and the time to enjoy both.

So far, she's been able to accomplish this feat thanks to a husband who draws a good salary and a medical practice that lets her work two shifts a week.

"It's awesome going part time," said Dr. Shu, who came back from an 18-month leave of absence in September. "If you can live without the full second income, it's ideal."

Dr. Shu worked five years at Sharp Rees-Stealey, a large multispecialty medical group in San Diego, before taking time off when her son was born. Now she works 10 to 16 hours a week for the group's after-hours clinic.

She is one of a growing number of women whose desire to work fewer hours is challenging the profession's traditional workweek. Experts believe that as the number of women physicians continues to increase across specialties, medicine will face some major cultural changes and may need to expand its work force to continue to ensure patient access.

Pediatrics is the leading edge of this trend, since the specialty has the highest percentage of women, said Richard Cooper, MD, director of the Institute for Health Policy at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

"Conventional wisdom is that the distribution of genders in medical school will eventually be 50-50 like the population, but that's wrong," Dr. Cooper said. "Colleges are seeing that more than 50% of their students are women. So it follows that medical schools will be more than 50% women in 10 to 12 years." [...]