September 2, 2020

Nearly 40% of physicians employed in hospitals in 2019 worked overtime exceeding the government-set danger line for “karoshi (death from overwork)”. Akahata learned this on September 1 from the results of a Labor Ministry survey of hospital doctors’ working hours.

The ministry in September 2019 conducted a one-week survey of the working hours of 8,937 hospital doctors. According to the survey, 29.3% of respondents were put in the annual equivalent of 960 hours of overtime. This amount is designated by the government as the danger line for death from overwork. In the same survey, 8.5% worked overtime over double the karoshi line.

The Labor Ministry on this day also compiled guidelines for shorter working hours for doctors in hospitals.

The guidelines set an upper limit of overtime for hospital doctors at 960 hours per year. This ceiling, however, will not be introduced until April 2024. In addition, the guidelines fail to call on medical institutions to hire more doctors and leave it up to them to take action to cut doctors’ working hours. Akahata criticized the guidelines as being ineffective.

Past related article:
> Labor Ministry panel imposes on doctors monthly overtime cap twice as high as gov’t-set danger line for ‘karoshi’ [March 29, 2019]