The Working Hours Act regulates how many hours employees may work per day and per week tops and which breaks they have to take. The ArbZG, which also applies to doctors, was passed in 1994. In 2003, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) toughened the law with regards to the German healthcare system. The ECJ decreed that on-call duty for doctors now legally was considered working time instead of rest time. However, this regulation was only implemented in Germany in 2017. Since then, on-call duty has been considered working time and doctors have been paid for it.
Below you find some key data from the ArbZG and information on the maximum working hours of a doctor per day and week, as stated by the Marburger Bund, the Association of privately and publicly employed doctors in Germany:
- The guideline value for working hours is eight hours per working day (from Monday to Saturday).
- Working hours can be extended up to ten hours per working day. However, the general guideline value may still only be a maximum of eight hours on average over six months.
- In the case of shift work, the daily working time can be up to twelve hours. In combination with standby duty or on-call duty, working hours of up to 24 hours are possible. However, this is the maximum working time including breaks.
- According to the ArbZG, the maximum weekly working time for doctors is 48 hours. However, this value should also be seen as an average. For example, working hours may be higher in one week and lower in another. Working hours include any type of work, for example full-time work, overtime, or on-call duty.
- Exceptions to the weekly working time of 48 hours are possible for on-call duty. In conjunction with a collective labour agreement, the ArbZG stipulates that the maximum working hours can be extended up to 58 hours. However, the prerequisite is individual consent, the so-called ‘opt-out consent’. This declaration is voluntary and revocable. Doctors who have signed the opt-out regulation can then be required to work more on-call hours.
- The ArbZG also defines rest breaks for employees. There must be at least 30 minutes of rest per day for a working day of six to nine hours. Workers must take a 45-minute break if they work for more than nine hours.
- At least eleven hours of rest should be taken after a working day. However, deviations are possible for employees in hospitals and other treatment, care and support facilities. However, they must compensate for a shortened rest period in another way.
- If a doctor, for example in a hospital, exceeds the maximum working hours, it is not the doctor himself who is prosecuted, but the employer. The employer is responsible for compliance with the rules of the ArbZG and must also bear the possible consequences under criminal law.
In the past, it often was unclear how much working time a doctor actually accumulated in their ‘work account’. The electronic recording of doctors' working time, which documents the entire time spent at the workplace, can help to remedy this. According to a poll taken by the Marburger Bund (MB-Monitor), electronic working time recording is now more established than in the past. Just under half of doctors (48%) stated that their working hours were systematically recorded electronically.