Like medicine, happiness takes practice. But when it comes to happiness, some say the deck is stacked against doctors.
While physicians can legitimately point to any number of concrete problems putting the kibosh on their joy, some of their problems may lay a whole lot closer to home.
The Physician Personality
First, let's be clear. Doctors aren't the only ones struggling to find happiness. In fact, when it comes to workplace frustration, they're in good company these days. Thanks to corporate downsizing, workloads are heavier and morale lower in offices and plants around the country. Still, with the national unemployment rate hovering around 8.6%, "in most fields just having a job makes you happy with your job," says Tommy Bohannon, a divisional vice president at Merritt Hawkins.
But medicine isn't most fields. Left unchecked, physician unhappiness can lead to major problems, including disruptive behavior, burnout, medical errors, health problems, addiction, depression, and failed relationships. It can also induce doctors to leave the clinical arena: 40% of physicians responding to a 2010 survey.
Second, it's important to note that human beings are not hardwired for happiness. As O'Connor notes, "The cavemen who liked to linger contentedly around the fire were more likely to get eaten by the bears, and thus were not available to be our ancestors. Instead, those who survived to be our ancestors were alert, competitive, never satisfied, always on the move -- and we've got their genes.
That's especially true of doctors, and other high-achieving professionals. It takes ambition, perfectionism and drive to make it into -- and out of -- medical colleges and while those qualities may be very useful for achieving goals, they don't tend to foster happiness and satisfaction.
An Unforgiving Work Environment
Transporting this Type-A personality into a workplace fraught with life-and-death decisions, litigious patients, reems of paperwork, constantly evolving technology, long hours, severe time constraints, and shifting reimbursement models simply turns up the heat.
The career they signed on for -- the one that consisted of independent private practices and personal relationships with patients -- is on its way out, according to 89% of physicians responding to theMerritt Hawkins survey. While younger doctors may happily trade the autonomy of the old model for the work-life balance and financial security of the new employment-based model, older doctors feel the rules of the game have been changed on them. To make matters worse, many have been forced to delay their retirement due to shrinking portfolios, so they unhappily toil on.
A Happiness Primer
So how's a doctor to find happiness? The same way everyone should, says one author in Medscape: work on it. Find a way to be happy in the now.
"The greatest myth of human life is the belief that I'll be happy if I just get what I want," says O'Connor. "All the research shows that as soon as we get what we want, we'll just want something else."
Instead, O'Connor counsels doctors to cultivate the essential relationships in their lives. Most people derive much of their joy and satisfaction from their family and friends: relationships that too often suffer in the face of 12-hour days and weekend call.
He also advises them to practice mindfulness, both through meditation and in their daily living. Mindful living is about taking a step back and seeing events in light of the bigger picture. The practice -- and it takes practice -- enables people to keep perspective so they can make wiser decisions based on rational thinking and intuition, rather than impulse.
But to be mindful people must learn to quiet their minds and settle down and that's something with which many doctors struggle. Dr. Aggarwal says she frequently challenges physicians to sit and do nothing for as long as they can. Few can sit still for more than a minute or two. Rather than relaxing, they try to "solve" their way through stress and burnout by doing more.
Instead, O'Connor counsels doctors to cultivate the essential relationships in their lives. Most people derive much of their joy and satisfaction from their family and friends: relationships that too often suffer in the face of 12-hour days and weekend call.
Goals Also Help
Having clear, achievable goals is important as well. For many doctors, graduating from medical school and getting into practice was a single-minded pursuit.
"The doctors who are doing well -- the ones who aren't in a burnout or stress cycle -- have an answer right off," she says. "You hear, 'I like to fish,' 'I love to camp,' 'I go bowling.' But the sad thing is many doctors don't have an answer."
It may sound trite, but for those doctors, finding a fun or fulfilling activity is itself an important goal. After all, their happiness depends on it.
Shelly M. Reese
Freelance writer, Cincinnati, Ohio
Source: Medscape
by
AKSHAYA SRIKANTH
Pharm.D Intern
Hyderabad, India
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