Career Vitality: Perceptions from Women Faculty in Health Professions

OBJECTIVE

Career vitality is experienced when personal and professional life commitments align. To examine perceptions of and strategies used by women faculty in health professions to achieve career vitality.

METHODS

A 2-round Delphi method was used to identify career vitality descriptors, personal-professional-life equilibrium, and strategies for achieving career vitality among 16 women faculty recruited from the National Academies of Practice. Qualitative analysis identified themes.

RESULTS

The consensus-generated descriptors of career vitality were 'growth mindset', 'motivated/passionate', and 'collaborative'. Descriptors of personal-professional-life equilibrium were 'prioritize', 'balance', and 'nimbleness'. Personal resilience was the major strategy to gain equilibrium. Challenging perceptions to overcome included role expectations for women working outside the home, which correlated with a system strategy such as organizational tools.

CONCLUSION

Achieving career vitality and personal-professional-life equilibrium is challenging. The strategies generated can be utilized by women faculty to better align work-related demands when challenges are high, and resources are low.

Balance Versus Integration: Work-Life Considerations

The term work-life balance may cause physicians to feel inadequate in pursuing a reality in which work and life each have equal importance. Furthermore, the term implies competition between these 2 realms. Instead, work-life integration is a more constructive and realistic term. Achieving harmonious integration requires self-reflection on the current state, goals, and resources and strategies needed to achieve and maintain such a state. Prioritizing aspects of both, and aligning them with individual requirements, while incorporating consistent and intentional investment of time and efforts in both professional and personal arenas is crucial to cultivate and sustain longitudinal well-being.

Embracing social media in the era of work-life integration

Radiology practices are leveraging social media for networking, education, branding, and marketing. This change inherently requires radiologists to increase their engagement in social media and may negatively affect work-life integration and contribute to radiologist burnout. In this article, we describe specific strategies that radiology practices may deploy to help balance work-life integration.

Parental satisfaction of U.S. physicians: associated factors and comparison with the general U.S. working population

BACKGROUND

Physicians work considerably longer hours and are less satisfied with work-life balance than U.S. workers in other fields. There is, however, minimal data on physicians' parental satisfaction.

METHODS

To evaluate differences in parental satisfaction among physicians and workers in other fields, we surveyed U.S. physicians as well as a probability-based sample of the general U.S. working population between August 2014-October 2014. Parental satisfaction and the perceived impact of career on relationships with children were evaluated.

RESULTS

Among 6880 responding physicians (cooperation rate 19.2 %), 5582 (81.1 %) had children. Overall, physicians were satisfied in their relationships with their children, with 4782 (85.9 %) indicating that they were either very satisfied [n = 2738; (49.2 %)] or satisfied [n = 2044 (36.7 %)]. In contrast, less than half believed their career had made either a major [n = 1212; (21.8 %)] or minor positive [n = 1260; (22.7 %)] impact on their relationship with their children, with a slightly larger proportion indicating a major (n = 2071 [37.2 %]) or minor (n = 501 [9 %]) negative impact. Women physicians were less likely to believe their career had made a positive impact as were younger physicians. Hours worked/week inversely correlated with the belief that career had made a positive impact on relationships with children. Both men (OR: 2.75; p < 0.0001) and women (OR: 4.33; p < 0.0001) physicians were significantly more likely to report that their career had a negative impact on relationships with their children than the sex-matched U.S. working population.

CONCLUSIONS

U.S. physicians report generally high satisfaction in their relationships with their children. Despite their high satisfaction, physicians have a more negative perception of the impact of their career on relationships with their children than U.S. workers in general.

An exploration of key issues and potential solutions that impact physician wellbeing and professional fulfillment at an academic center

Background. Physician wellness is a vital element of a well-functioning health care system. Not only is physician wellness empirically associated with quality and patient outcomes, but its ramifications span individual, interpersonal, organizational, and societal levels. The purpose of this study was to explore academic physicians’ perceptions about their work-related wellness, including the following questions: (a) What are the workplace barriers and facilitators to their wellness? (b) What workplace solutions do theythinkwouldimprove their wellness? (c)What motivates their work? and (d) What existing wellness programs are they aware of?

Methods. A multi-method design was applied to conduct a total of 19 focus group sessions in 17 clinical departments. All academic faculty ranks and career lines were represented in the 64 participating physicians, who began the sessions with five open-ended survey questions pertaining to physician wellness in their work environment. Participants entered their answers into a web-based survey program that enabled anonymous data collection. The initial survey component was followed by semi-structured focus group discussion. Data analysis of this qualitative study was informed by the general inductive approach as well as a review of extant literature through September 2015 on physician wellness, professional fulfillment, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, burnout and work-life.

Results. Factors intrinsic to the work of physicians dominated the expressed reasons for work motivation. These factors all related to the theme of overall contribution, with categories of meaningful work, patient care, teaching, scientific discovery, self-motivation and matching of career interests. Extrinsic factors such as perceptions of suboptimal goal alignment, inadequate support, restricted autonomy, lack of appreciation, and suboptimal compensation and benefits dominated the risk of professional dissatisfaction.

Discussion. Our findings indicate that the factors that enhance professional fulfillment and those that precipitate burnout are distinct: motivation and quality of work performed were supported by domains intrinsic to the work itself, whereas external dysfunctional work aspects resulted in frustration. Thus, it can be anticipated that optimization of physician wellness would require tailored approaches in each of these dimensions with sustained funding and support for wellness initiatives. Physicians identified the availability of resources to enable them to thrive and provide excellent patient care as their most important wellness-enhancing factor.