Doctors don’t Do-little: a national cross-sectional study of workplace well-being of hospital doctors in Ireland

Abstract

ObjectivesTo measure levels of occupational stress, burn-out, work–life balance, presenteeism, work ability (balance between work and personal resources) and desire to practise in trainee and consultant hospital doctors in Ireland.DesignNational cross-sectional study of randomised sample of hospital doctors. Participants provided sociodemographic data (age, sex), work grade (consultant, higher/basic specialist trainee), specialty, work hours and completed workplace well-being questionnaires (Effort–Reward Imbalance (ERI) Scale, overcommitment, Maslach Burnout Inventory) and single item measures of work ability, presenteeism, work–life balance and desire to practise.SettingIrish publicly funded hospitals and residential institutions.Participants1749 doctors (response rate of 55%). All hospital specialties were represented except radiology.Results29% of respondents had insufficient work ability and there was no sex, age or grade difference. 70.6% reported strong or very strong desire to practise medicine, 22% reported good work–life balance, 82% experienced workplace stress, with effort greatly exceeding reward, exacerbated by overcommitment. Burn-out was evident in 29.7% and was significantly associated with male sex, younger age, lower years of practice, lower desire to practise, lower work ability, higher ERI ratio and greater overcommitment. Apart from the measures of work ability and overcommitment, there was no sex or age difference across any variable. However, ERI and burn-out were significantly lower in consultants than trainees.ConclusionsHospital doctors across all grades in Ireland had insufficient work ability, low levels of work–life balance, high levels of work stress and almost one-third experienced burn-out indicating suboptimal work conditions and environment. Yet, most had high desire to practise medicine. Measurement of these indices should become a quality indicator for hospitals and research should focus on the efficacy of a range of individual and organisational interventions for burn-out and occupational stress.

Assessing the mental wellbeing of next generation general practitioners: a cross-sectional survey

“…Other studies highlighted the same factors as main sources of physicians' stress. 7,25,30,31 The combination of high perceived stress, and rather infrequent thoughts of leaving the profession aligns with Hayes et al's results: hospital doctors in Ireland complained of poor work-life balance and high work stress, but were nevertheless motivated to pursue their profession. 30 Other recent studies 13,14 also show that young physicians are highly motivated to practise as GPs.…”

“…These results align with findings from other studies that identified the training period as the phase most characterised by distress and difficulty. 4,29,30 Despite high stress levels, GPs had the highest mental wellbeing among the subgroups, and higher compared with the GP sample surveyed in the cross-sectional study of Murray et al (50.2 versus 54.2 in the present sample). These results show that after completion of the training period, wellbeing increases among practising Swiss GPs and is higher compared with a similar GP sample in the UK.…”

Analyzing the Job Demands-Control-Support Model in Work-Life Balance: A Study among Nurses in the European Context

“…In fact, at the Social Summit for Fair Employment and Growth held in Gothenburg in November 2017, the WLB was proclaimed as a European pillar of social rights [12]. Despite this, the peculiarities of the work environment that surrounds the nursing profession makes it difficult to reconcile work and family life, preventing a high level of work satisfaction from being achieved [13,14].…”

Hospital doctors in Ireland and the struggle for work–life balance

“…This is in line with the quantitative survey findings 23 and also with previous research internationally 19 and in Ireland—where only one in five hospital doctors surveyed were satisfied with their work–life balance. 24 This article illustrates the distress caused by work–life imbalance and its impact on male and female respondents. Although the work–life balance debate often focuses on the experiences of mothers of young children, our results highlight that work–life imbalance is a problem for both men and women and those with any caring responsibilities.…”