Who is the modern American physician?

It’s a question that pop culture has done a lousy job answering over the years. Remember when Americans imagined the family physician as Marcus Welby, MD, the avuncular doctor who always had plenty of time for all his patients?

That was nice. But it was never really true, and for decades that image has been fading. Today, the public view of American doctors is probably closer to Gregory House: super smart and committed to quality care, but overstressed, grumpy, and unhappy.

But this image, too, is a distortion. Despite seemingly insurmountable frustrations, you’re not an unhappy bunch. As a group you’re pretty content with your lives and you like being physicians.

Here at Physicians Practice, we’ve been growing tired of half-baked caricatures of physicians; we knew that the real, modern American physician community is more complex and diverse, more like the rest of the American public than an upper crust elite standing apart, and we wanted to better understand you — and maybe help you better understand each other. We asked nearly 1,600 physicians about their outlook on work, life, politics, and family as part of our first-ever Great American Physician Survey.

What emerges from our data is a varied landscape of individuals, but also a group that is, for the most part, content.

(*Interested in looking at survey data broken out by gender, age, and region? Here are the stats you’ll need.)

You’d like more time with your family. You wish we had a better healthcare system. But most of you feel more rewarded by your work than burned out on it, and you strive with some success to find time for yourself and your family.



A few daily hassles

Pediatric surgeon Chris Anderson, who logs more than 100 hours a week and volunteers his surgery skills on his “off” weekends, is in the minority. His marathon work weeks aren’t that common among physicians we surveyed. It turns out only 3.7 percent of you clock more than 80 hours a week, and the most common work week spanned 41 to 50 hours.

But Anderson doesn’t mind the long hours. “I wouldn’t volunteer those extra weekends if I didn’t really like it,” he says, adding that you can’t go wrong in a profession where you help children. Considering the hours, says Anderson, who works at Advanced Pediatric Surgical Specialists in Orlando, Fla., “You better like it, or you’d be miserable.”



And it appears as though you do like it. Contrary to some surveys suggesting that business and management issues are killing physicians’ job satisfaction, more than half of respondents strongly agree with the statement, “I like being a physician,” with another 30 percent agreeing. (Only 2 percent strongly disagreed with that sentiment.)

That compares favorably to other Americans. Some 60 percent of U.S. workers in general are reportedly “very happy” in their jobs, according to a 2007 survey.

The likes of Miami gastroenterologist Miguel Rodriguez, 50, who yearns to be a marine biologist, are also a decided minority. Though he says he does like medicine, he adds: “All this hassle with medicine — if I could secure my life in [financial] terms, I would with no hesitation drop out of medicine.”



But most physicians would not. In fact, most physicians we surveyed said they’d change little if anything about their careers: Pluralities or majorities were happy with their specialty choices and employment situations. Pediatrician John Clapper couldn’t really imagine leaving his current employer, Pediatrics Northwest in Tacoma, Wash. “It’s an amazing group,” he says. “Every time we hire someone, we unanimously agree and hire people we are really going to trust taking care of our patients. We all just trust each other.” Indeed, a plurality (37 percent) would encourage a son or daughter to consider medicine.