Juggling act between work and home responsibilities cause problems for American doctors

More burnout and depression found among physicians who work long hours, are younger, or female

2013-09-16

(Press-News.org) Spare a thought for American doctors and their partners: because of long working hours and dedication to their work, they seem to have more squabbles over home and family responsibilities than people in most other professions. This constant struggle to balance work and home life are felt especially by those whose life partners also work, or by female physicians, younger doctors and physicians at academic medical centers. It manifests as burnout, depression and lower levels of satisfaction about their quality of life. This is according to Liselotte Dyrbye of the Mayo Clinic in the US, the leader of a new study¹ in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer.

The results are based on a survey of 7,288 doctors (75.2 percent male) and 891 partners (73 percent female) who completed an emailed set of questions. They were asked among other things about their weekly working hours, burnout, symptoms of depression, conflicts between personal and professional responsibilities, satisfaction with work/life balance and suicidal thoughts. The physicians and partners who responded to the questionnaire were on average 55 and 51 years old, respectively, and most had children.

According to the survey results, those physicians who put in long hours, are younger, female or work in an academic medical center experienced more work-home conflicts. In turn, among their employed partners, only working hours were associated with experiencing more work-home conflicts after other personal and work-related factors were taken into account. Doctors who experienced work-home clashes within the three weeks prior to the survey had more symptoms of burnout and thoughts of divorce than those with less conflict-ridden personal-professional lives. In most cases, physicians and their employed partners were able to resolve work-home conflicts in a manner that met both home and work responsibilities. However, compared to their partners, physicians were more likely to put their work first.

The finding that the two sexes experience work-home conflicts differently suggests that traditionally held societal beliefs about women's role in the home and workforce still hold true for many American women physicians. This highlights the need for ongoing work in this area.

"The medical fraternity could learn valuable lessons from higher education institutes and the business sector on how to counter ongoing work-home conflicts, which result in a loss of talent as well as gender imbalances in the workforce," Dyrbye suggests.

These solutions include a culture that encourages family-friendly policies without fear of retribution, greater autonomy in scheduling work-related tasks and approaches such as job sharing and the purposeful alignment of personal and professional values and priorities. Practically, this includes setting up child care centers, allowing workers to use their own sick leave to tend to ill family members, making overtime less burdensome and rethinking personal leave.

### References: 1. Dyrbye, L.N. et al. (2013). A survey of US physicians and their partners regarding the impact of work-home conflict, Journal of General Internal Medicine. DOI 10.1007/s11606-013-2581-3 2. The Journal of General Internal Medicine is the official journal of the Society of General Internal Medicine.

The full-text article is available to journalists on request.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New study evaluates the risk of birth defects among women who take antihistamines in pregnancy

2013-09-16

(Boston) -- Antihistamines are a group of medications that are used to treat various conditions, including allergies and nausea and vomiting. Some antihistamines require a prescription, but most are available over-the-counter (OTC), and both prescription and OTC antihistamines are often used by women during pregnancy. Until recently, little information was available to women and their health care providers on the possible risks and relative safety of these medications in pregnancy, particularly when it came to specific birth defects. A new study from Boston University's ...

NASA saw Tropical Storm Manuel soak western Mexico

2013-09-16

Tropical Storm Manuel was soaking southwestern Mexico while Tropical Storm Ingrid was soaking eastern Mexico on Sept. 16. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Manuel and the AIRS instrument captured infrared data that showed powerful thunderstorms were dropping heavy rainfall. However, Manuel's interaction with land caused the storm to dissipate on Sept. 16. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Manuel on Sept. 16 at 0841 UTC/4:41 a.m. EDT and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument looked at the storm in infrared light. That data was used to create ...

'Kaesong industrial zone will not change much in North Korea'

2013-09-16

Despite fractional openings in North Korea, such as the reopening of the Kaesong industrial zone on Monday, there is little chance of any improvement in the "catastrophic human rights situation" under the head of state, Kim Jong-un, according to scholarly valuation. "Unnoticed by the regime, information from abroad contradicting the state propaganda is in fact presently leaking into the country via mobile phones, radios and DVDs, and the joint North and South Korean industrial park at Kaesong will also mean more outside contact. But this will not improve the human rights ...

Report: Climate change to shift Kenya's breadbaskets

2013-09-16

NAIVASHA, KENYA (16 SEPTEMBER 2013)—Kenyan farmers and agriculture officials need to prepare for a possible geographic shift in maize production as climate change threatens to make some areas of the country much less productive for cultivation while simultaneously making others more maize-friendly, according to a new report prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA). The report, released today by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture ...

Superconductivity to meet humanity's greatest challenges

2013-09-16

The stage is now set for superconductivity to branch out and meet some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. This is according to a topical review `Superconductivity and the environment: a Roadmap', published today, 16 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Superconductor Science and Technology, which explains how superconducting technologies can move out of laboratories and hospitals and address wider issues such as water purification, earthquake monitoring and the reduction of greenhouse gases. Lance Cooley, a guest editor of the article who is based at ...

Scientists discover cosmic factory for making building blocks of life

2013-09-16

Scientists have discovered a 'cosmic factory' for producing the building blocks of life, amino acids, in research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The team from Imperial College London, the University of Kent and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that when icy comets collide into a planet, amino acids can be produced. These essential building blocks are also produced if a rocky meteorite crashes into a planet with an icy surface. The researchers suggest that this process provides another piece to the puzzle of how life was kick-started ...

Achilles' heel of ice shelves is beneath the water, scientists reveal

2013-09-16

New research has revealed that more ice leaves Antarctica by melting from the underside of submerged ice shelves than was previously thought, accounting for as much as 90 per cent of ice loss in some areas. Iceberg production and melting causes 2,800 cubic kilometres of ice to leave the Antarctic ice sheet every year. Most of this is replaced by snowfall but any imbalance contributes to a change in global sea level. For many decades, experts have believed that the most important process responsible for this huge loss was iceberg calving - the breaking off of chunks ...

Functional genetic variation in humans: Comprehensive map published

2013-09-16

European scientists, led by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE)'s Faculty of Medicine in the context of the GEUVADIS project, today present a map that points to the genetic causes of differences between people. The study, published in Nature and Nature Biotechnology, offers the largest-ever dataset linking human genomes to gene activity at the level of RNA. Understanding how each person's unique genome makes them more or less susceptible to disease is one of the biggest challenges in science today. Geneticists study how different genetic profiles affect ...

'Wildly heterogeneous genes'

2013-09-16

Cancer tumors almost never share the exact same genetic mutations, a fact that has confounded scientific efforts to better categorize cancer types and develop more targeted, effective treatments. In a paper published in the September 15 advanced online edition of Nature Methods, researchers at the University of California, San Diego propose a new approach called network-based stratification (NBS), which identifies cancer subtypes not by the singular mutations of individual patients, but by how those mutations affect shared genetic networks or systems. "Subtyping is ...

Researchers discover evidence to support controversial theory of 'buckyball' formation

2013-09-16

Researchers at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have reported the first experimental evidence that supports the theory that a soccer ball-shaped nanoparticle commonly called a buckyball is the result of a breakdown of larger structures rather than being built atom-by-atom from the ground up. Technically known as fullerenes, these spherical carbon molecules have shown great promise for uses in medicine, solar energy, and optoelectronics. But finding applications for these peculiar structures has been difficult because no one knows exactly how they are formed. Two ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

People with sensitive personalities more likely to experience mental health problems

Want to improve early detection of diabetes? Look in the same households as those with abnormal blood sugar

Unveiling the gut-heart connection: The role of microbiota in heart failure

Breakthrough insights into tumor angiogenesis and endothelial cell origins

Unlocking the power of mitochondrial biogenesis to combat acute kidney injury

MIT study sheds light on graphite’s lifespan in nuclear reactors

The role of fucosylation in digestive diseases and cancer

Meet Allie, the AI-powered chess bot trained on data from 91 million games

Students’ image tool offers sharper signs, earlier detection in the lab or from space

UBC Okanagan study suggests fasting effects on the body are not the same for everyone

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Children’s Hospital Colorado researchers conduct first prospective study of pediatric EoE patients and disease progression