Are pagers replacing the stethoscope as a medical symbol?
Shelley Martin martis{at}cma.ca’ + u + ‘@’ + d + ”//–> The recently released CMA 2000 Physician Resource Questionnaire found that 76% of Canadian physicians regularly take or share call duties. Until they turn 65, age has little effect on the proportion of doctors who accept call. However, by the time they reach that late stage of their careers, only 50% of physicians are still taking call. Doctors younger than 35 are more likely to log more call hours in an average month: 22% of younger doctors reported working over 180 shared call hours per month (a schedule more frequent than 1 in 4), compared with an overall result of 16%. Not surprisingly, rural doctors are more likely than their urban colleagues to put in more than 180 shared call hours per month (25% versus 15%). Surgical specialists are more than twice as likely to record more than 180 hours of shared call per month than are GP/FPs (27% vs. 13%); 15% of medical specialists reported more than 180 hours of shared call in an ave
