Parenting Journal · Volume 1 · Issue 5 · Licensed source edition
Physician Work Patterns in Pregnancy, Parental Leave, and Return to the Workforce
Originally published 2026-04-22 · JAMA Network Open
American Medical Association (AMA) · DOI 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.7543 ↗
Working-family evidence
Work, care and the whole person.
Measures work before, during and after pregnancy, raising the question of whether apparent choice to frontload work reflects financial and practice pressures.
Directly examines work and family life, parenting, caregiving or employment policies for families.
Editorial reading guide · Independence
Can someone step away for childbirth without first overloading their workday?
Measures work before, during and after pregnancy, raising the question of whether apparent choice to frontload work reflects financial and practice pressures.
Study context
3,932 practicing Ontario physicians with 5,948 deliveries, using registration and billing data.
Age / stage: Adult physicians; median age 35 at delivery.
Read with three questions
- How were work cessation and resumption inferred from billing records?
- How did workdays and overnight work change across trimesters?
- What cannot billing data tell us about financial pressure, unpaid work or personal preferences?
Keep the limits in view
Billing claims are an incomplete proxy for workload and do not reveal motives; the observational Ontario physician cohort does not establish a general corporate work pattern.
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Original authorship, publication date, journal and DOI are preserved. This issue’s TRICK placement and reading questions are editorial additions, not claims made by the original authors.
Andrea N. Simpson; Rinku Sutradhar; Eric McArthur; Maria C. Cusimano; Peter Tanuseputro; Nancy N. Baxter (2026). Physician Work Patterns in Pregnancy, Parental Leave, and Return to the Workforce JAMA Network Open. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.7543
Permissions checked against the saved article notice; repository publication notices screened 2026-11-05. This is not a new peer-review decision. The source authors and publishers are not represented as endorsing this issue.