Marriage, children burnout contributors

[...]while this increase in burden on women physicians may be partly attributed to traditional societal gender roles, the reality is that most male physicians report having a stay-at-home spouse whose primary role is to provide for the household, with only 12% of their spouses working at fulltime jobs, while nearly all of the partners of women physicians work fulltime outside the home. Women often report a sense of obligation to spend more time at home, and make greater accommodations to their work schedule in order to manage household tasks than men physicians, including making a career change to accommodate their spouse's career or child-raising responsibilities.2,3 Women physicians also face strong feelings of guilt-when they are managing the home, they may worry about not being available to their patients. While no one enters into a marriage expecting to get divorced, the reality is that women physicians are at higher risk for divorce than men physicians, and the rate of divorce increases with the number of hours that women physicians work.7 With a doctor's potential for high earnings, many divorce attorneys see dollar signs when retained to represent a divorce involving a physician. Physician burnout is strongly associated with a lack of control at work, and yet women physicians tend to have less control in the workplace than men do.9 Since burned-out physicians tend to leave the practice of medicine, it is in the best interest of both physicians and employers to give doctors more control over their schedules. BY THE NUMBERS...