The Balancing Act: Work-Life Balance in Medicine
The Key to Well-Being and Career Longevity
When considering the importance of work-life balance within the medical field, researchers on the topic Siva Raja, MD, PhD, and Sharon L. Stein, MD, FACS, FASCRS, summarize it best when they write, “Work-life balance is often discussed and difficult to achieve.”
Indeed, in an industry known for long hours, grueling schedules, and high-stress environments, the odds of harmonizing career ambition with home life and personal fulfillment seem stacked against medical professionals. Yet study after study demonstrates the need for physicians to employ this harmony to ensure their own well-being and the well-being of their patients.
Perhaps the most effective way to highlight the value of work-life balance is by showcasing the steep consequences of work-life imbalance. In recent research conducted by the American Medical Association, over half of physicians reported experiencing burnout — a leading cause of workplace dissatisfaction and professional disillusionment within the healthcare industry.
In fact, a University of Ottawa study found that 50 percent of physician respondents reported thinking about leaving academic medicine, and 30 percent reported thinking about leaving medicine altogether due to burnout. Physicians and medical students also experience depression, substance abuse, and suicide at a rate two to six times the national average. These harrowing statistics suggest that medical professionals need even more opportunities to recover and recharge than the average worker to compensate for the unique emotional, mental, and physical demands of the job.
Research also shows that the rigor and stress of working in the medical field often impacts life at home. In a study on stress and burnout among surgeons, only 36 percent of respondents felt their work schedule left sufficient time for personal and family life. Additionally, one third of the 1,118 married surgeons surveyed were divorced. Some of the respondents reported divorcing even after 30 years of marriage, underscoring the long-term strain medicine can place on a partnership.
Within our own conversations with exemplary women in medicine through the Oral History Project, the importance — and elusiveness — of work-life balance emerges as a common thread across generations. Psychiatrist Dr. Carol C. Nadelson, MD recalls the uncertainty she felt when she and a few of her female coworkers discovered they were pregnant while working at Beth Israel Hospital in 1965. “We used to meet in the cafeteria and think, ‘What are we going to do?’” she said. “There’s no such thing as daycare. Nobody could afford having a nanny. Nobody had family around that could take care of kids. And it was sort of like a new world. What were we going to do?”
In the end, Dr. Nadelson and other female physicians across specialties banded together to create Boston’s first daycare center, ensuring no one would have to choose between building a family and building a career.
For behavioral psychologist Dr. Ellen Ruth Gritz, PhD, the suicide of a fellow physician during her tenure as founding chair of the behavioral science department at the Anderson Cancer Center (1993-2014) opened her eyes to the lack of institutional safeguards in place to protect faculty well-being. In response, Dr. Gritz started the Faculty Health Project, a committee dedicated to identifying and preventing burnout amongst faculty, as well as destigmatizing internal attitudes towards mental health.
Serving as chair for over two decades, Dr. Gritz used her position of leadership to help younger faculty members find and maintain perspective even as they reached their goals. “I’m hoping that for the young people whose careers I’ve helped to start, and facilitate, that they will see that […] life is much bigger than only your career,” she said. “I believe very, very strongly […] in mental and physical balance, relationship balance, and work-life balance.”
That’s a conviction we should all strive to share.
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