Happier Australian Doctors Prepared to Work Longer Hours

A new study suggests that increasing job satisfaction for Australian general practitioners (GPs) may alleviate some of the pressures facing the Australian primary health care system.

Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS; Australia) conducted a study to explore factors associated with GPs’ desire to work less, and their success in making that change. To do so, they reviewed a national longitudinal survey of 7,100 Australian doctors in clinical practice held during 2010-2011, examining the association between the desire of the GPs to reduce hours, job and geographic characteristics, as well as the association between the predictors and the capability of the same doctors to do so.

The results showed that over 40% of the GPs stated a desire to reduce their working hours, but that most (73.2%) failed to do so within a year. Characteristics of doctors wanting to reduce their hours included being middle-aged, female, working more than 40 hours a week, and being on-call. Doctors who were in excellent health, satisfied or very satisfied with their work and who were not partners in a practice were less likely to want to reduce their hours. The predictors of successfully reducing work hours (by at least 5 hours per week) were being younger, female, and working more than 40 hours per week. The study was published on April 21, 2014, in the Medical Journal of Australia.

“It is difficult to determine whether satisfaction with working hours is a major determinant of overall job satisfaction, or whether the causality runs in the reverse direction,” said study authors Richard Norman, PhD, and Prof. Jane Hall, BA, PhD, of the UTS Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation. “Nonetheless, we believe that enhancing attractive job features may well be a viable policy option for increasing doctor availability.”

“In the context of an ageing population, the demand for GPs is likely to continue to rise over time; our results show that improved GP job satisfaction is associated with less desire to reduce working hours,” concluded d the authors. “This implies that further investigation of policies that can improve GPs' job satisfaction may well ensure improvements in the doctor supply. Meeting the needs of the population for primary health care and supporting those providing this care represents an important balance that must be made, and an area of ongoing challenge and opportunity.”

Although the number of GPs in Australia rose from 20,616 in 1999 to 25,707 in 2009 (an increase of 24%), this was offset by a decline in the work hours of a typical GP, falling from a mean of 45.6 hours per week to 42.2. During the same period the Australian population grew from 18,925,855 to 21,616,400 (14%), but the declining working hours contributed to the perceived shortage in GPs.

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