The changes to shift work for young doctors in hospitals was a relatively recent occurrence and it was clear the modern generation of doctors had different attitudes to work and work practice than their elders.
At this stage, it was not clear how that attitude might influence attracting doctors into specialties.
What affected specialty choice was often complicated.
His own specialty, psychiatry, for instance, was finding it hard to recruit people and that was not necessarily to do with work practices.
All specialists did after-hours work, so it was difficult to single out specialties which might be affected if doctors became reluctant to do on-call work.
It was a complex issue and among the aspects yet to be debated was the impact on patient care and continuity of care which came from changes to working patterns, Dr Adams said.
The issue of doctors' working hours is among those raised in the Medical Training Board discussion paper, released last year, on the future of the medical workforce.
Its report assumed that, for the next 25 years, doctors who completed medical training would have a working week 5% shorter than the working week of those who retired.
The report acknowledged there were huge variations in individual working experiences which made it difficult to establish trends for doctors, as a group, that could be used reliably in forecasts.
The New Zealand Medical Council's medical workforce survey report for 2007 showed the average number of hours worked for all doctors was steadily decreasing, dropping from 46.8 hours in 2002 to 44.8 hours in 2007.
Men's hours (47.7), on average, continued to be higher than women's (40) in 2007.
It also showed hours when doctors were on call, but not required to work, had decreased generally, from about 10 hours in 2000 to about seven in 2007 (although some doctors taking part in the survey may have chosen not to provide details of their on-call hours).
Specialists recorded the highest on-call hours.
