Make sure family time is quality time

Don't waste those precious hours. "The lives of children do not wait"

By Gillian Woodford

"Mommy, I wish you were just a mommy and not a doctor."

This poignant plea is enough to break any physician-parent's heart. And by all accounts there are a lot of broken-hearted docs out there. In interviews conducted with physicians last year, University of Calgary sociologist Jean Wallace, PhD, heard this and many more sad tales from stressed out docs wracked with guilt about not spending enough time with their families. Dr Wallace presented preliminary findings from her research at the CMA-AMA International Conference on Physician Health last month.

Everybody knows practising medicine is tough on family life. Just 19% of Canadian doctors say their current work/life balance is working, according to the most recent data from the CFPC's National Physicians' Survey, while around 8% describe themselves as "very dissatisfied" with the situation.

No fewer than 70% of physician respondents told Dr Wallace their family's number one wish would be for them to "spend less time at work and more time at home." But physicians are tugged the other way by pressures from patients, colleagues and the system to work more. So how can you find the right balance?

LOOK OUT FOR #1
During the course of her research, Dr Wallace shadowed several doctors at work. Two things struck her almost immediately. First, they never stop. "They never eat or drink," she says. "They don't go to the bathroom." After nearly passing out with hunger and fatigue, Dr Wallace set a rule to stop and take breaks. Unfortunately the docs she was shadowing didn't follow her example.

The second thing she noticed is that physicians are very bad at asking for or accepting help. "Sometimes someone would offer help and they'd say 'No, I've got it under control,'" she recalls. This "protectiveness about vulnerability," says Dr Wallace, impacts on their family life because it means they rarely leave work when they're supposed to, they put off vacations and they don't take time off when they're ill. The result, several doctors told her: "You go home feeling drained and can't spend quality time with the family."

TAKE BACK THE FAMILY
"The lives of children do not wait," stresses psychiatrist Dr Dianne Maier. She's seen a lot of unhappy medical families as clinical director of the Alberta Medical Association's Physician and Family support program. But she admits she had to learn the hard way when she was raising her own kids, now 24 and 25, with her physician husband. "I wasn't always so smart," she says. "When I was in med school it was a whole different generation — there was no such thing as time off post-partum."

Depressingly, Dr Wallace's research found there's still a big gender gap: "86% of mother physicians report work-to-family conflict compared to 62% of fathers"

Dr Wallace applauds the fact that med students are now regularly taught that living a balanced life will make them a better doctor. "But then they enter the workplace and the attitude there is 'you're not a good doctor if you have a life outside medicine.'"

Dr Maier agrees that "subtle pressure is brought to bear" by more senior physicians, undermining the values taught in med school.

Ironically, these same older docs often finish their own careers with feelings of regret. "Some have gone through divorces," says Dr Wallace, "and they say 'the reason my first marriage failed was because of medicine.'" She says these older docs were more likely to have had stay-at-home wives, which isn't the case with younger physicians, most of whom are in dual-career relationships. Dr Maier treats a lot of physicians in her practice and says she frequently hears regret from older docs about not spending enough time with their kids. "Nobody says at the end of their career 'I wish I'd worked more,'" she observes.

For more, please check out our Physician Wellness Now special section in the January 15 issue.