Japan Press Weekly

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2017 November 8 - 14 [LABOR]

Doctors in rotating shifts work 64 hours of overtime a month: union survey

The number of monthly overtime hours is 53.3 for hospital doctors working the day shift and 63.9 for those who work in rotating shifts. This was shown in the survey results that a trade union representing salaried doctors released on November 9.

The union between July and September surveyed 1,621 medical doctors.

In the survey, 7.3% of full-time doctors who take on night shifts said that they worked more than 80 hours of overtime per month. Furthermore, 8.2% had an experience of working without a day off for a month. Even among doctors on the day shift, 4.9% worked more than 80 extra hours on a monthly basis.

Regarding a question about workloads, 45.5% of the respondents said that they carry heavier workloads than they did two years ago. Among physicians doing shift work, 79% said that they feel themselves losing their concentration ability when working for more than 24 hours in a row.

The most common answer to a question regarding measures to improve doctors’ working conditions is “to enable physicians to take more full days off (785 doctors)”, followed by “to decrease the number of nights worked per month (487)” and “to shorten working hours (478)”. In order to achieve these measures, the largest number of the respondents, or 1,024, pointed to the need to increase the number of doctors.

Past related articles:
> Symposium held to discuss issue of overworked hospital doctors [September 10, 2017]
> 30% of male hospital doctors work more than 60 hours a week: Labor Ministry [April 9, 2017]