Burnout is more common among physicians than among other US workers. Physicians in specialties at the front line of care access seem to be at greatest risk.

Alcohol abuse or dependence is a significant problem among American physicians. Since prognosis for recovery of physicians from chemical dependency is exceptionally high, organizational approaches for the early identification of problematic alcohol consumption in physicians followed by intervention and treatment where indicated should be strongly supported.

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Despite reporting high levels of job satisfaction, orthopaedic residents and faculty are at risk for burnout and distress. Identification of protective factors and risk factors may provide guidance to improve the quality of life of academic orthopaedic surgeons in training and beyond.

Background Improving the resiliency of healthcare workers is a national imperative, driven in part by healthcare workers having minimal exposure to the skills and culture to achieve work–life balance (WLB). Regardless of current policies, healthcare workers feel compelled to work more and take less time to recover from work. Satisfaction with WLB has been measured, as has work–life conflict, but how frequently healthcare workers engage in specific WLB behaviours is rarely assessed. Measurement of behaviours may have advantages over measurement of perceptions; behaviours more accurately reflect WLB and can be targeted by leaders for improvement. Objectives To describe a novel survey scale for evaluating work–life climate based on specific behavioural frequencies in healthcare workers. To evaluate the scale’s psychometric properties and provide benchmarking data from a large healthcare system. To investigate associations between work–life climate, teamwork climate and safety climate. Methods Cross-sectional survey study of US healthcare workers within a large healthcare system. Results 7923 of 9199 eligible healthcare workers across 325 work settings within 16 hospitals completed the survey in 2009 (86% response rate). The overall work–life climate scale internal consistency was Cronbach α=0.790. t-Tests of top versus bottom quartile work settings revealed that positive work–life climate was associated with better teamwork climate, safety climate and increased participation in safety leadership WalkRounds with feedback (p<0.001). Univariate analysis of variance demonstrated differences that varied significantly in WLB between healthcare worker role, hospitals and work setting. Conclusions The work–life climate scale exhibits strong psychometric properties, elicits results that vary widely by work setting, discriminates between positive and negative workplace norms, and aligns well with other culture constructs that have been found to correlate with clinical outcomes.