What kind of doctors work the least?

Allergists and immunologists work the least number of average weekly hours among medical specialists, logging about 44 hours per week.

Specialties with the Fewest Work Hours

Surveys from medical sources like Medscape via PracticeLink show that certain fields require fewer weekly hours due to predictable, outpatient-only care and a lack of emergencies:

• Allergy and Immunology: ~44.1 hours per week. Focuses on scheduled clinic visits for asthma and allergies with virtually no overnight or emergency call duties.
• Dermatology: Offers regular clinic hours, elective procedures, and very few emergency or hospital duties.
• Psychiatry: Increasingly utilizes telehealth and scheduled outpatient therapy sessions, contributing to lower physical stress and regular hours.
• Pathology and Ophthalmology: Mostly clinic or lab-based with scheduled appointments and minimal after-hours hospital work.

Why These Fields Require Less Time

• Outpatient Settings: Doctors in these roles treat non-urgent, ambulatory patients rather than acute hospital cases.
• No On-Call Crises: They rarely deal with midnight trauma or emergency surgeries.
• Private Practice Control: Many choose independent or private practice settings, allowing them to dictate patient volume and office hours.

Family medicine and pediatrics are generally considered the "easiest" types of doctors to become because they have the shortest residency programs (3 years) and the lowest entry competition.

While all medical fields require the same 4 years of medical school, "easier" usually means shorter training time, less competitive matching, and better work-life balance.

Least Demanding and Shortest Specialties

• Family Medicine: Requires a 3-year residency. It has high match rates and lower average test score requirements than surgical fields, though it requires broad general knowledge.
• Pediatrics: Requires a 3-year residency focused on children. It has low entry barriers and flexible work options, though pay is lower than specialty fields.
• Internal Medicine: Requires a 3-year residency treating adult diseases. It is less competitive to enter, but can lead to longer hours depending on the job.
• Psychiatry: Requires a 4-year residency. It offers predictable hours and good flexibility, but deals with heavy emotional burdens from patients.

Opinions on Reddit are mixed regarding fields like pathology; some users note it has great regular hours without emergencies, while others warn it requires continuous, intense studying and isn't truly "easy".

Emergency medicine doctors, obstetrician-gynecologists (OB/GYNs), and general or cardiothoracic surgeons consistently report the worst work-life balance and highest burnout rates in the medical field.

Highly Demanding Specialties

• Emergency Medicine: Features unpredictable front-line shifts, high stress, and frequent overnight or irregular scheduling, often leading to burnout rates above 60%.
• Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN): Involves unpredictable delivery times, emergency surgeries, and round-the-clock on-call demands that disrupt personal schedules.
• General and Cardiothoracic Surgery: Requires long operative hours, management of high-acuity patients, and rigorous emergency interventions that leave little time for personal life.
• Primary Care and Internal Medicine: While hours can be more stable, doctors face heavy administrative burdens, extensive electronic health record (EHR) charting, and high patient volumes.

According to a consensus on Reddit, surgical subspecialties like cardiothoracic surgery demand such long hours that the hospital often feels like a second home. Data from the American Medical Association tracks these high stress and burnout trends across hospital-based and surgical fields.

Emergency medicine, urological surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology consistently rank as the most stressful medical specialties, driven by high-acuity pressure, erratic schedules, and heavy administrative burdens.

According to data from the American Medical Association reports, stress and burnout rates peak across several key fields:

Most Stressful Specialties

• Emergency Medicine: Features the highest reported burnout rates (approaching 50% to 65% depending on the metric) due to unpredictable, high-stakes environments and severe overcrowding.
• Urology & Urological Surgery: Frequently cited for high stress due to workforce shortages, managing patients in severe acute pain, and delivering sensitive diagnoses.
• Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB-GYN): Combines unpredictable 24/7 on-call demands, high malpractice litigation risks, and the emotional weight of critical outcomes.
• Hematology/Oncology: Strains physicians through long-term exposure to advanced illness, emotional fatigue, and palliative end-of-life care.
• Family & Internal Medicine: Burdened heavily by endless administrative paperwork, electronic health record (EHR) requirements, and complex care coordination.

Common Stress Factors

• Time and Volume Pressures: Short appointment windows paired with massive patient numbers.
• Schedule Disruption: Overnight shifts, irregular weekend calls, and lack of work-life integration.
• High-Stakes Decisions: Immediate life-or-death choices or permanent liability from diagnostic imaging and surgical mistakes.

Family medicine is consistently ranked as the least competitive and most accessible medical specialty according to data tracked by resources like Med School Insiders.

Least Competitive Specialties

Medical student popularity is often measured by how competitive a residency program is to enter based on board scores and match rates. The least popular or least competitive fields include:

• Family Medicine: Features the highest match rates (around 99%) and lowest average board exam scores required for entry.
• Pediatrics: Frequently ranks near the bottom for competitiveness and average physician pay.
• Emergency Medicine: Has seen shifts in popularity and lower barrier metrics in recent residency cycles.
• Psychiatry: Maintains high demand but lower relative competitiveness compared to surgical subspecialties.

Rarest Specialties by Active Count

If you mean the specialties with the lowest total number of practicing doctors rather than student preference, the numbers look different:

• Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology: Around 2,632 active physicians.
• Pediatric Critical Care Medicine: Around 2,774 active physicians.
• Pediatric Anesthesiology: Around 2,843 active physicians.