Welcome to the November 2009 Doctors' e-Cohort Study e-Newsletter

Update on the Doctors' e-Cohort Study...

The first wave of surveys in the Doctors' e-Cohort Study has now been completed! 

Recruitment

Recruitment for the study ran for 15 months between April 2008 and June 2009. All doctors registered in Australia and all medical students enrolled at an Australian University were eligible to participate. Students of The University of Queensland were able to register until 14th August 2009.

A range of recruitment strategies were used, including mail outs of study flyers with medical registration renewals, links on the websites of various Speciality Colleges and Divisions of General Practice and advertisements in journals such as Surgical News. 

Recruitment strategies were often implemented simultaneously which makes it difficult to quantify the effectiveness of any particular one.  However, direct emails to potential participants and the offer of incentives appear to have elicited the highest response rates. Many thanks to the RACGP, who emailed its members in May this year to notify them of the study.

 

Survey Completion Rates...

Survey 1

Survey 1 closed on 18th September 2009, with a final completion rate of 87% (excluding duplicate and bogus registrations).

As reported in the previous newsletter, the proportions of doctors and medical students who completed their survey following registration remained relatively constant over the recruitment period (~75%, see Figure 1 below). 

Figure 1 Survey Completion Rates

The increase of completions in the final three weeks of the survey followed a targeted campaign involving a series of contacts which included email, SMS and a personalised letter. 42% of participants who had not yet started their survey and 25% of those who had started but not finished, logged in and completed their survey. 

A VERY BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THOSE WHO COMPLETED THE SURVEY IN THE FINAL STAGES!!

 

Preliminary results...

Who are the participants in the Doctors' e-Cohort Study?

Number of participants

1828

Age and gender

The age of participants ranges from 19 to 79 years of age and 55% of participants are female.  We're very glad to have such a broad spectrum of participants, from medical students to registered doctors who are now retired.

Country of training

90% of participants completed or will complete their medical training in Australia, although graduates of more than 22 other countries are also represented in the sample.  After Australia, the three most commonly represented countries are the United Kingdom (2.8%), New Zealand (2.2%) and India (1.0%).

Medical students

51% of the e-Cohort are medical students, predominantly from The University of Queensland.

Registered doctors

Of the registered doctors in the study (49%), 71% are specialists or on a specialist training program, 4% are interns and 25% are neither specialists nor interns.

Working hours

Approximately 96% of the registered doctors in the e-Cohort are currently working in medicine.  Of these, 33% work 40-49 hours per week and 18% work 50-59 hours per week.

Retirement plans

Interestingly, while 50% of the doctors surveyed plan to retire between the ages of 60-69, 4% plan to retire aged 70-79 and 2% intend to keep working until 80+ years of age!

Doctors' physical health

High quality patient care depends on happy and well doctors.  We present here some preliminary results about the health of doctors participating in the Doctors’ e-Cohort study.

Figure 2 shows the current health status of registered doctors.  About 2/3 of doctors reported their health as being excellent or very good.

 

Figure 2 Current health status

Figure 3 shows current health status compared with 12 months ago. Less than 20% of doctors reported having poorer health now than 12 months ago.

 

Figure 3 Current health status compared with 12 months ago

About 70% of doctors reported having a regular GP or family doctor (other than themselves). Participants reported an average of 2.4 consultations to that doctor in the last 12 months and 1.5 consultations with a specialist.  Of the consultations with a specialist, 32% reported referring themselves and 52% reported a referral from an independent doctor.

 

Working with the Doctors’ e-Cohort...

The Doctors' e-Cohort team invite interested researchers to collaborate on the Study.  If you are interested in working with the Doctors' e-Cohort, please let us know by email. PhD students welcome.

 

Content of this newsletter

If you have any suggestions for the content of this newsletter or you (or one of your colleagues) would like to be featured in a participant profile section, please let us know by clicking here to send an email.