A survey released Tuesday revealed that many primary care doctors in the United States were considering the option of quitting medicine or at least decreasing the number of patients they were seeing, since they felt overworked.

Moreover, 60 percent of the doctors stated they did not recommend medicine as a career, the survey further showed.

Conducted by the Physicians' Foundation, the survey was mailed to a number of 270,000 primary care doctors, as well as to 50,000 practicing specialists, from whom 12,000 answers were received, which was deemed by the Foundation as a representative group.

Data gathered showed that 78 percent of respondents reckoned that currently, there are too few primary care doctors throughout the United States. Furthermore, over 90 percent of them complained that the non-clinical paperwork had come to take up a lot more of their time during the last three years, which took its toll on the time doctors spent with each of their patients.

The survey also found that 11 percent of the doctors who answered it were planning to retire, while 13 percent were considering getting a job that no longer entailed active patient care. In addition, in order to avoid being overworked, 20 percent of the respondents stated they would be seeing a smaller number of patients in the future, whereas 10 percent were thinking of switching to a part-time schedule.

Overall, 76 percent of the 12,000 physicians felt they were overworked, coming to regard their medical career as a burden.