Table 1.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria based on the PICO framework

Concept	Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
Population	Doctors in postgraduate medical training (all grades) Specialist doctors General Practitioners	Other health professionals Undergraduates Studies with no clarification of which health professionals were studied Doctors undertaking LTFT postgraduate degree courses (eg, MSc or PhD) Doctors who only work LTFT in academic and not clinical medicine Doctors accredited in multiple specialties and work LTFT in one of their specialties but work full-time overall
Intervention	LTFT or part-time working Flexible work schedule involving voluntary reduced hours	Externally enforced reduced working hours for example, European Work Time Directive Studies focused on the flexibility to increase working hours Studies which describe reduced work hours but which fall outside of the review’s definition of LTFT hours (ie, ≤40 hours per week)
Comparison	Full-time working or no comparison
Outcomes	Characteristics and factors which influence LTFT working for example, sex, age, parenthood, career stage, etc Patient outcomes, for example, patient safety, patient satisfaction, clinical outcomes, etc Workforce/health services outcomes for example, doctor recruitment, staffing levels of doctor-led healthcare services, attrition from medical career, etc Doctor outcomes, for example, career satisfaction, well-being, burn-out, etc	Outcomes related to gender differences within the medical profession rather than working patterns Outcomes related to externally enforced reduced working hours
Context	Any specialty within medicine Any country Publications up to March 2022	Studies published in languages other than English
Study type	Quantitative Qualitative Mixed methods Grey literature such as theses, dissertations, government papers and reports from relevant organisations	Reviews Conference abstracts unless further data or publications can be obtained from authors Opinion papers, editorials and commentaries without primary data Book chapters or sections

LTFT, less than full time.