According to a new study published online this week in the BMJ, doctors don’t get divorced at higher rates than other healthcare professionals, which has been a common misconception due to demands like stress and long hours that come with the job.
“If you talk to physicians, there seems to be this conception or notion that doctors are more likely to be divorced, not only more than other health-care professionals, but the population at large,” said the study’s senior author, Anupam Jena, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, according to The Washington Post.
The researchers analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data and found that doctors were less likely to divorce than dentists, healthcare executives and nurses. Pharmacists were the only ones with a slightly lower rate.
For the study, a group of 250,000 physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and healthcare executives were analyzed. Also included were 59,000 lawyers (to look at those with similar income and education level) and 6.3 million non-healthcare professionals to provide a wider context.
The researchers results showed the disparity: Physicians had a 24 percent likelihood of divorce; 23 percent for pharmacists; 25 percent for dentists; 31 percent for health-care executives; 33 percent among nurses; 27 percent among lawyers; and 35 percent for non-healthcare workers.
Interestingly, women physicians had a slightly higher rate than men.
“Females traditionally bear more of the household and child-rearing responsibilities on average, and female physicians, if they have to do both that and maintain a job as a physician, that could lead to a lot of stress and lead to higher rates of divorce,” Jena said. “For women physicians, they appear to be essentially getting a raw deal because there is a trade-off they have to make, that unfortunately the male doctors don’t have to be making.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
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Though perhaps unfairly, women have to be more cognizant of balancing their work and home life, but Jena said overall these results should be reassuring for those entering the medical field who may have previously thought the profession was more of a risk to relationships.
