Most Physician Spouses/Partners Are Happy

Despite the portrayals of rocky home lives and marriages on the brink in TV soap operas and primetime dramas, an overwhelming majority of physicians' spouses and partners say they are happy with their relationships, Mayo Clinic research shows.

The study, "The Medical Marriage: A National Survey of the Spouses/Partners of US Physicians,"published this month in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that 85% of the 891 spouses or partners of physicians who responded said they were satisfied with their mate, and 80% said they'd pick a physician again if they had to revisit the choice.

Three-quarters of the physicians' spouses or partners who responded to the survey were female, and 40% of the respondents had a full-time job and worked at least 30 hours a week outside of the home, the survey shows.

"It gives us data that shatters some stereotypes," Tait Shanafelt, MD, lead author of the survey and a Mayo Clinic hematologist and oncologist, said in an interview.

"First, in a large proportion of relationships the physician is a woman. In the majority of the relationships, the partner has a career of his or her own and is working a substantial number of hours outside the home," he says. "It also shatters the stereotype that is promulgated on TV that physicians' personal relationships are always of poor quality and they are at risk of divorce. That doesn't bear out in the data."

Shanafelt says the survey also challenges perceptions that the professional characteristics of physicians' jobs are going to determine whether or not they are satisfied in their personal lives. "There is nothing to suggest that the surgeon is going to have a less-satisfying marriage than a person in a non-surgical specialty or that it is all about the hours worked or if I am in academic or private practice," he says.

"What was striking was when we did the multi-varied analysis, none of the professional characteristics was related to relationship satisfaction, with the exception of the number of nights on call. In some ways, that can be reassuring to physicians who are in some of the greater intensity specialties that demand more hours. Those things unto themselves don't preclude satisfying relationships on the home front."

One of the biggest drivers for spouse or partner satisfaction was the amount of "awake time" spent each day with their physician partners.

"That was far more important than whether they were in a certain specialty and how many hours a week they worked," Shanafelt says. "This could help physicians who are trying to nurture good relationships begin to not blame shortcomings necessarily on the professional life."

"Here again, there was a very strong response affect for that amount of time spent together awake. Each 20-minute increment up was a step up toward a greater degree of satisfaction, and partners and spouses were less likely to consider a divorce," he says. "It seems like you can have a demanding area of specialization and heavy work hours, but if you are making sure you still invest in that personal relationship it can still be of great quality."

The study was funded by the American Medical Association and the Mayo Clinic Department of Medicine Program on Physician Well-being.