Audiey C. Kao, MD, PhD, led the first study in which researchers surveyed 2,263 physicians. The survey featured six validated true-false statement and asked providers about their sense of calling, which researchers defined as “committing one’s life to personally meaningful work that serves a prosocial purpose.”
The first study found:
1. Of those polled, 28.5 percent reported experiencing some degree of burnout.
2. Physicians with the highest burnout rates reported substantially lower responses about medicine being their calling.
3. Physicians who said they had high degrees of burnout were less likely to perceive work as a top priority in their lives.
4. Dr. Kao noted researchers cannot make any definitive conclusions about burnout undermining a physician’s sense of calling or that having a sense of calling prevents burnout as the study was cross-sectional. He told Medscape Medical News, “Physicians’ sense of competence may be undermined if they think that the performance measures they are being held accountable for are not meaningful measures of their clinical competency or quality of care delivered.”
Journal of General Internal Medicine published the second study online on Feb. 6, 2017, which included 1,289 physician responses. Physicians responded to a 38-item survey between October 2011 and December 2011, answering questions about their career and life satisfaction.
The second study yielded the following results:
1. Of those polled, 88.4 percent said they viewed medical practice as a calling.
2. When looking at their day, 82.2 percent said they had almost 2.5 hours of rewarding hours.
3. Approximately 45.5 percent reported burnout symptoms.
4. The researchers concluded “We found that a sense of calling was most strongly associated with high life meaning and commitment to direct patient care, and that personally rewarding hours were most strongly associated with career and life satisfaction and commitment to clinical practice.”
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