Gender Differences and Work-Family Conflicts among Emergency Physicians with Intention to Leave

Backgrounds. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationships among intention to leave, emergency physician clinical activities, work-family conficts, and gender diferences in emergency physicians (EPs). Methods. The survey instrument was a selfadministered questionnaire containing basic demographic information and characteristics of clinical activities. Te work-family conficts were assessed by the Chinese version of the work-family confict (WIF) scale. Te questionnaires were mailed to boardcertifed EPs between January 2014 and August 2014. Student’s t-test, Chi-square test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to test the diference between subgroups. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the factors associated with intention to leave and gender diferences. Results. Te study included 222 respondents for analysis afer exclusions. Compared with physicians not planning to leave, those planning to leave ED practice showed higher dissatisfaction with their clinical work hours (50.0% versus 31.4%, p = 0.035) and night/day shif ratio (52.9% versus 31.0%, p = 0.013) and tended to work with night/day shif ratio exceeding 40% (67.6% versus 45.7%, p = 0.019). Female physicians were more likely to leave ED practice (females versus males, 26.5% versus 10.1%, p = 0.008). A signifcantly higher level of WIF scale was noted in the group with intention to leave ED practice (3.7 ± 0.6 versus 3.3 ± 0.7, p = 0.001). Conclusions. Females and EPs with higher level of WIF scale were more likely to leave emergency clinical practice. Instead of the number of clinical practice hours, the satisfaction with the clinical work hours and night shif frequency were signifcantly associated with the intention to leave.