General practitioners' subjective experience of surgery workload.
General practitioners (GPs) in the U.K. frequently cite heavy workload as a major source of work-related stress. However, there is little direct evidence either to support this claim or to suggest whether the source of this stress lies in the amount, or rather the type, of work undertaken. The present paper uses a within-subjects design to address these issues in the surgery context. Over a two-week period three GPs gave ratings of subjective workload following each of their surgeries (N = 20-23). Correlational analysis showed a wide range of surgery characteristics to predict the GPs' reactions, including the length of surgeries, the number of consultations, the number of re-presentations, and the number of follow-ups and investigations requested. The GPs' perceptions of their patients (e.g. in terms of their health status and the appropriateness of the consultation), in contrast, did not emerge as significant predictors. The results of multiple regression analyses, however, revealed that most of the first-order effects could be accounted for by surgery length. Thus while the study supported the hypothesised link between the overall level of surgery work demands and the subjective experience of workload, it failed to confirm any consistent additional effects of the type of work involved. It was also found that as the length of surgeries increased, the GPs were more likely to arrange follow-up appointments. The implications of the present findings are therefore two-fold.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Norman
P
P
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, England.
Fitter
M
M
Wall
T
T
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001071:Appointments and Schedules; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D004739:England; D005194:Family Practice / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D010821:Physicians, Family / Q000523:psychology*; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000209:etiology*; D013514:Surgical Procedures, Operative / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014940:Work Schedule Tolerance