On physician well being--You'll get by with a little help from your friends

Jean Elizabeth Wallace and Jane Lemaire

Social Science & Medicine, 2007, vol. 64, issue 12, 2565-2577

Abstract: This study identifies positive and negative factors associated with physician well being. We collected two sets of data from physicians at a university-based Department of Medicine in Western Canada. First, we conducted exploratory, in-depth interviews with 54 physicians to identify factors associated with their well being. Participants explained that certain aspects of their work are demanding and negatively related to their well being, whereas other 5 factors are more enabling and contribute positively. Second, we mailed a structured questionnaire including measures of the key factors identified in the physician interviews to all physicians in the same Department of Medicine. Multivariate analysis was used to assess the extent to which the factors identified in the interviews are significantly related to physicians' well being. The findings show the importance of co-worker support, both in terms of being directly related to physician well being as well as buffering the negative effects of work demands. We discuss several important implications for physicians and the organizations that employ them in understanding the factors related to physician well being. In addition, patient interactions appear to be both a key source of stress and a major source of satisfaction in physicians' daily work lives.

Keywords: Canada; Physicians; Well; being; Job; stress; Coping; strategies; Employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(07)00147-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:64:y:2007:i:12:p:2565-2577

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().