Working hours of general practitioners: Identifying differences in working hours with data obtained by a real time measurement tool

The working hours of general practitioners (GPs) play a central role in analysing their workload and to enable health workforce planning. Triggered by signals of Dutch GPs experiencing an irresponsible workload, it has become increasingly important to objectively measure their actual workload in terms of time-use during a working week. In this research of Daniël van Hassel, an innovative time-use measurement tool based on SMS text messaging was applied among more than 1,000 GPs. The assessment shows that this tool has many advantages over other methods of time-use measurement. It implies minimal burdening for GPs, provide nearly real time responses and avoids recall bias. In addition, it was found that the working hours of Dutch GPs differ in particular by gender, regardless their age and employment position. Another result is that the image of a higher workload in rural practices does not completely match the working hours of GPs in these areas