About 82% of radiologists reached in a recent survey said they’re in a happy marriage, placing the specialty near the middle of the pack.
Otolaryngologists landed at the top of the list at 91%, tied with allergy and immunology experts, while plastic surgeons represented the last of the list at 75%. The findings are part of Medscape’s 2022 Physician Lifestyle & Happiness Report, released on Friday.
The website surveyed more than 13,000 U.S. physicians across 29 specialties for the report—including nearly 400 in radiology—with data gathered between June and September. At least three quarters of docs in every specialty surveyed described their marriage as either “good” or “very good.”
Role agreement and appreciating one’s contributions to the family are crucial to successful unions, Wayne Sotile, PhD, founder of the Center for Physician Resilience, told Medscape. “Work shaming,” meanwhile, can prove detrimental.
“For some, the pandemic added fodder to the festering,” he said. “The ‘How could you put our family at risk by going to work? Just say no’ guilt trip damaged the souls of many physicians and the trust and friendship that should be the foundation of any good marriage.”
Overall, 85% of docs surveyed said their marriage is “good” or better, same as the last iteration of the survey released prior to the pandemic. However, the numbers by specialty appear much different, with radiology recording a 51% happy-marriage mark at the time. Sotile said he has seen many docs counseled at his center attempt to reset their work-family balance amid the pandemic.
“We’ve heard, ‘I’ve connected more with my spouse and children during the past 18 months than I ever have,” he told Medscape. “And ‘Historically, our lifestyle was filled not only with my work, but also with our collective family ‘busyness.’ … I think that keeping our kids as busy as we are was a misguided way of normalizing a lifestyle that we are now changing.”
About 83% of physicians surveyed said they are either married or living with a partner, with higher percentages among male physicians (89%) compared to their female counterparts (75%). And 18% said they are married to another medical doctor, while 25% said their spouse is in healthcare, and 56% answered “none of the above.”
You can read much more from Medscape on the state of physician well-being below.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.