Profiles in Happiness : Which Physicians Enjoy Life Most?

1. Profiles in Happiness: Which Physicians Enjoy Life Most? DR. ABDULLAH S. DELMANY

3. Author affiliation: Carol Peckham, Director of Editorial Development, Medscape, LLC Posted: 03/22/2012

5. Introduction • How happy are physicians with their lives outside of work? • And are some specialists happier than others? • What are physicians' political leanings, and are they religious? • Are physicians fat and do they exercise as often as they advise their patients to?

6. The medical literature includes hundreds of studies on work satisfaction, but almost none involve physician life outside the hospital or the office. Currently many physicians express unhappiness with their life in practice. • According to a 2010 Merritt Hawkins survey sponsored by the Physicians Foundation, 40% of physicians said that they planned to drop out of patient care in the next 1-3 years.

7. How Happy Are Physicians With Their Lives Outside of Work? • According to a 2006 Pew Report, 34% of Americans say that they are "very happy," 50% "pretty happy," and 15% "not too happy."[1]Medscape asked US physicians how happy they were with their lives outside of medicine and to rate their level of happiness on a scale of 1 to 5, with1 being the least happy and 5 being the most. Approximately one third of physicians -- both men and women -- rated themselves a 5(approximating the "very happy" in the Pew report) and 40% rated themselves a 4 (suggesting "pretty happy").

8. The average happiness score for physicians who responded was 3.96, which is on the cheerful side but not overwhelmingly happy. • When looking at happiness ratings by specialist, the 5 happiest were rheumatologists (4.09), dermatologists (4.05), urologists (4.04), ophthalmologists (4.03), and emergency medicine physicians (4.01). • The 3 least happy professionals were tied at 3.88: neurologists, gastroenterologists, and internists. The next unhappiest were oncologists, general surgeons, and plastic surgeons, all tied at 3.89.

11. What Are Physicians' Favorite Pastimes? • Male and female physicians rated their top 5 pastimes in the same order: exercise/physical activity; reading; travel; cultural events; and food and wine. • Other favored physician activities, cited frequently in write-in answers, included sewing and knitting, working with animals, and singing.

13. What Percentage of Physicians Are Married? Single? • Among physicians who responded to this survey, over 85% of men and 71% of women are married, a rate far above that of the general US population. • In the Medscape survey, nearly half of physician respondents in that same age group reported being married. Male physicians, whether married or single, were more likely to be living with a partner (89%) than their female peers (76%). • Over 14% of women said that they are single and, presumably, have never been married, compared with only 5.62% of men.

15. How Do Physicians Rate Their Own Physical Health? • In this survey, the healthiest specialists by self-report were dermatologists, plastic surgeons, endocrinologists, orthopaedists, and cardiologists. • The 5 least healthy were psychiatrists, pathologists, ob/gyns, pediatricians, and physicians in critical care. Because internists and family and emergency physicians were also in the bottom 10, it is tempting to conclude that those who go into general medicine are in worse shape than their subspecialty peers.

17. How Many Physicians Are Overweight? • According to CDC statistics, in 2008 40% of US men were overweight and 32% were obese.[7] Physicians in this survey didn't do much better: Approximately 37% of male doctors reported being overweight, with 5.3% being obese. • As for women, according to the CDC, 28.6% were overweight in 2008 and 35% were obese. • In the Medscape survey the percentage of women physicians who reported being overweight tended to be slightly lower (26%) than the nation's women, and obesity rates were also much lower (6.2%). Physicians' own weights may play a role in how they talk to overweight patients. • Physicians need to address this directly when communicating with their patients -- why they choose to remain fat or to smoke -- so they can be credible."

18. Please reduce your weight

22. How Often Do Physicians Exercise? • According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2009 the percentage of men 18 years of age and over who met the 2008 federal aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening guidelines increased from 19% to 22%.[7] • According to the Medscape survey, then, physicians do better than the average American, and the older they get the more they exercise. • Whether this is a matter of free time or consciousness of aging cannot be determined from this survey. • According to the response to the next question, about 7% of female and 8% of male physicians do not exercise at all.

24. What Types of Sports and Exercise Do Physicians Engage in the Most?

27. Do Physicians Smoke? • Although the national quit rate has increased slightly over the past few years, according to a 2011 Harris poll, 18% of Americans still smoke.[10] • Among nonsmokers, physicians lead the national pack: Only 2% of men and 1.28% of women report that they smoke. • About 9% of men and 5% of women were once smokers but quit.

28. Doctors advice :Smoking kills

30. How Often Do Physicians Drink Alcohol? • As reported in a 2010 Gallup poll,[16] 67% of American adults drink alcohol, a rate that has been "remarkably stable" since this began being tracked in 1939 • According to the Medscape survey, male physicians are slightly ahead of the national population, with 73.4% reporting that they drink. • Female physicians are closer to the national average, with 65% saying that they drink alcohol. • About 15% of men and 10% of women report having 1-2 alcoholic beverages a day, with only 3.3% of men and 1.25% of women admitting to more than 2.

32. How Religious Are Physicians? • According to a 2008 Pew Report, 88% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit.[13] • When asked if they have any religious or spiritual belief, 83% of physicians reported that they do, with slightly over 40% of them actively practicing their faith. • The remaining 17% had no belief system. • Of note, there were almost no differences at all between men and women in regard to having or not having a belief and actively or not actively practicing.

37. What Would Physicians Do if They Were Told They Had a Terminal Illness? • In a 2011 poll conducted by the National Journal and the Regence Foundation,[14] 71% of the general population felt that quality was more important than length of life, 23% felt that it was important to extend life with every intervention available; and only 6% didn't know or didn't answer the question. • Physicians, according to this poll, were more ambivalent, with slightly over 23% uncertain about how they would respond if they were told they had a terminal illness. • Almost 65% of physicians said that they would choose quality over length of life, and only about 12% were certain about wanting to have aggressive treatment. • When the responses were filtered by religious or spiritual belief, over 70% of those with no belief system reported that they would choose quality of life over extending life.

39. Where Do Most Physicians Lean on the Political Spectrum? • A Rasmussen Report in May 2011 reported that 29% of American voters characterize themselves as both fiscal and social conservatives, and only 10% said that they are liberal in both areas.[3] In the Medscape poll, physicians seem to be slightly more extreme on either side. When asked about their political leanings, approximately 37% of male physicians and 25.5% of women defined themselves as being conservative both socially and fiscally

40. Only 18.4% of male physicians but 27.5% of female physicians described their views as being liberal in both areas. When broken down, the great majority of physicians are fiscally conservative (77% of men and 68.9% of women). Women tended to be more liberal both socially (66.8%) and fiscally (31.1%) than their male peers (58.6% and 23%, respectively).

42. How Much Vacation Do Physicians Take Each Year? • With an average of 13 paid vacation days per year, Americans do far worse than those in other developed countries (eg, Italy, 42; France, 37; Germany, 35; United Kingdom, 28; Canada, 26; Japan, 25). • About half of all physicians take 2-4 weeks off from their work. • However, like their patients, more than a quarter of internists, general surgeons, and family and emergency medicine physicians take off for only 1-2 weeks a year. • As evidence that some physicians have more fun than others, nearly half of anesthesiologists and radiologists who answered this survey took more than 4 weeks of vacation each year.

44. What Cars Do Physicians Drive? • In 2011, the top 4 highest selling cars in the United States were made by non-US companies: Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, with Ford coming in fourth.[16] • Physicians who answered the Medscape survey also listed foreign-made cars in their top 5: Toyota (16.73%), Honda (14.8%), Lexus (8.3%), BMW (7.5%), and Mercedes-Benz (5.32%). • Ford came in a very close sixth at 5.24%, and Chevrolet came in eighth at 4.13%.

46. References • Pew Research Center. Are we happy yet? February 13, 2006. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet Accessed February 13, 2012. • Stone AA, Schwartz JE, Broderick JE, Deaton A. A snapshot of the age distribution of psychological well-being in the United States. Proc NatlAcadSci U S A. 2010;107:9985-9990. • ITE Travel. World tourism. Facts and figures. http://www.travel-exhibitions.com/news/WorldTravel.FactsandFigures.htm Accessed March 12, 2012 • US Travel Association. Travel facts and statistics. http://www.ustravel.org/news/press-kit/travel-facts-and-statistics Accessed February 8, 2012. • Morales L. Fewer Americans "thriving" in 2011 than in 2011. Gallup Wellbeing http://www.gallup.com/poll/152033/Fewer-Americans-Thriving-2011-2010.aspx Accessed February 4, 2012. • Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life/U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. February 2008. http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf Accessed February 13, 2011. • Maselko J, Hayward RD, Hanlon A, Buka S, Meador K. Religious service attendance and major depression: a case of reverse causality? Am J Epidemiol. 2012 Feb 20. [Epub ahead of print]. • The National Journal and the Regence Foundation. Living Well At the End of Life: A National Conversation. http://syndication.nationaljournal.com/communications/NationalJournalRegenceToplines.pdf Accessed February 4, 2012.

47. Rasmussen Reports. 29% say they're conservative on both fiscal and social issues. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/may_2011/29_say_they_re_conservative_on_both_fiscal_and_social_issues Accessed February 4, 2012. • Tavernise S. Married couples are no longer a majority, census finds. New York Times. May 26, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/us/26marry.html Accessed February 8, 2011. • Cohn D, Passel J, Wang W, Livingston G. Barely half of US adults are married -- a record low December 14, 2011. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/12/14/barely-half-of-u-s-adults-are-married-a-record-low/ Accessed February 5, 2012. • Sobecks NW, Justice AC, Hinze S, et al. When doctors marry doctors: a survey exploring the professional and family lives of young physicians. Ann Intern Med. 1999;130:312-319. • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health, United States, 2010; with special feature on death and dying. US Department of Health and Human Services. National Center for Health Statistics. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus10.pdf#fig14 Accessed February 5, 2012. • Ajani UA, Lotufo PA, Gaziano JM, et al. Body mass index and mortality among US male physicians. Ann Epidemiol. 2004;14:731-739. • Harris Interactive. Healthy and unhealthy behavior and lifestyle trends: no significant change in 2011 in proportions of adults who are obese, smoke or wear seatbelts. May 25, 2011. http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/HI-Harris-Poll-Healthy-Behaviors-2011-05-25.pdf Accessed February 4, 2012. • Newport F. U.S. drinking rate edges up slightly to 25-year high. Gallup Wellbeing. July 30, 2010. http://www.gallup.com/poll/141656/drinking-rate-edges-slightly-year-high.aspx Accessed February 4, 2012. • McAllester M. America is stealing the world's doctors. New York Times. March 7, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/america-is-stealing-foreign-doctors.html?ref=magazine Accessed March 12, 2012. • Clearfield E, Batalova J. Foreign-born health-care workers in the United States. Migration Policy Institute. http://www.migrationinformation.org/USFocus/display.cfm?id=583#6 Accessed February 4, 2012.

48. THANKS