How many hours do doctors work a day in average?

If your biggest concern is how much time off you're going to have, then forget medicine. Slackers are not well tolerated.

For medical school and residency, your while life WILL be consumed by work and studying. When you are established in practice, you have the ability to make choices that may free up more of your time.

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It all depends on the amount of time a doctor wants to dedicate to his/her practice. I know doctors that work 12 hour days 5 days a week and I also know doctors that work 6 hours a day 5 days a week, so the range is 30 hours-60 hours a week on average. You could easily set your practice up to work in a facility that you only work 30 hours/week and definitely live comfortably. The old ways of long hours and little sleep is a thing of the past, you can definitely define who you are and how you want to practice. If you want to be a workaholic then go for it, if you want to be more family orientated then that is very realistic and manageable.

Residents average only 80 hours a week these days.

Specialty and years in practice matter a LOT after that, but the last I looked, an overall average was in the low to mid 50's for a week of work.

Relatively few docs are in solo practice these days, so they share evening, night and weekend call. They cover for one another on vacations. Fewer docs are making hospital rounds, leaving that to a relatively new breed called hospitalists. Docs in smaller cities and towns may have to work longer than those in larger cities.

So yes, you have time for a life.

Well it all depends on what you call a "life". My neighbor is an MD & he is hardly ever home. It kind of stinks to watch his family spend days & evenings alone. Other MD friends of ours have terrible schedules. They have no children and their past time hobby is mountain biking. Of course, they ride when their schedule permits but when it comes to doing races that they would like to do, its a no-go due to their unpredicatable schedules.