Surveys: Doctors’ spouses content

by: Roy Edroso Mar 29, 2013

A survey of physicians’ husbands and wives shows that they’re satisfied with their partners – though there are a few odd findings as well.

A study appearing in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings asked spouses about their marriages and found a mostly cheerful picture.

Of the 1,644 spouses/partners of physicians who were contacted, 891 completed surveys. More than 70% of respondents were female, and their media age was 54. Most had been married to their physician spouse for more than 20 years, and a whopping 86.9% of the unions were blessed with children.

Interestingly, of the 56.4% of spouses who worked outside the home, 40.9% were employed as health care professionals, and 10.2% were M.D.s.

The satisfaction scores were impressive. About 55.4% were “extremely” happy and 31.4% were “somewhat” satisfied” with their marriages; 80.9% said they “would… choose a physician spouse/partner again.” Only 12.4% said they had ever seriously contemplated divorce. (This tracks pretty closely with non-profession-specific polls of married Americans.)

“The findings challenge a number of stereotypes about physician relationships,” says Tait Shanafelt, M.D., lead author of the study. “While every relationship has challenges, our research shows that on the whole, doctors’ spouses and partners are extremely happy in their relationships.”

On the other hand, a little more than half the respondents said the physician-spouse came home from work “too tired to do some of the things you would like to do” once a week or more.

Also, the survey says that “the amount of time spent awake with their physician partners each day was the dominant characteristic associated with spouses'/partners' satisfaction with their relationship” – though half of respondents spent less than 90 minutes a day in waking time with their spouses. Maybe the authors mean something different by that than at first seems apparent.

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