Understanding Perspective and Context in Medical Specialty Choice and Physician Satisfaction

In its 2004 spring report, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) posits that Behavioral Sciences provides a perspective that can assist physicians in understanding their patients as embedded in a larger social and environmental context (Patricia A. Cuff and Neal Vanselow, Editors, Improving Medical Education: Enhancing the Behavioral and Social Science Content of Medical School Curricula). The report further indicates that perspective and context is crucial to patient care in terms of understanding the interaction between biological, cognitive, and learning processes to produce behavior, illness and health. Perspective and context is equally important in understanding physician satisfaction. The authors present their findings from a qualitative research study at one northeastern medical college in which they explored factors influencing physician satisfaction. The authors describe responses from practicing physicians and how responses were categorized into twenty (20) themes. Categorized themes from the study include: academic side of medicine, balancing personal and professional life, business side of medicine, clinical issues within specialty, dissatisfaction with medicine, expectations of medicine, gender, geographical location, match, monetary rewards, personal rewards/ satisfaction, politics within medicine, practice of medicine, pressures and demands, switching specialty/quitting medicine, stress associated with medicine, time commitments, training issues, full time/part time work, and other circumstances (i.e., military, locum tenums). The authors share "rich" examples from various themes found in the study. What are the implications of this study, specifically as it relates to behavioral science departments in American medical colleges? Participants in the study offer advice to medical students and faculty. The authors share this advice and solicit further suggestions for behavioral sciences from conference participants. The IOM recent report recommends that medical students demonstrate competency in one of six domains, including physician role and behavior. Physician well being is one of the high priority topics for inclusion in medical school curricula. Understanding physician satisfaction and assisting medical students in making informed choices about specialty choice is an important area for medical schools to examine. Including physician satisfaction and medical specialty choice in the behavioral sciences curriculum can also provide perspective and