Are physicians embracing work-life balance over ‘workaholic culture?’

There’s a divide splitting the generations of older physicians trained in ‘workaholic culture’ and younger doctors who want better balance between demands of patient care and life outside of medicine.

This fall, the Wall Street Journal published “Young Doctors Want Work-Life Balance. Older Doctors Say That’s Not the Job.” Author Te-Ping Chen began: “There’s a question dividing the medical practice right now: Is being a doctor a job, or a calling?”

“For decades … doctors accepted long hours and punishing schedules, believing it was their duty to sacrifice in the name of patient care,” the article said.

“All us old guys are taking ER call, and you got guys in their 30s at home every night. It’s just a sore spot,” said Jefferson Vaughan, MD, 63, a 30-year surgeon and medical director of the Institute for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery at the Jupiter Medical Center of Jupiter, Florida. He is on call for emergency department duty up to seven nights a month, the article said.

Being on call was part of the calling of medicine. But now referring to “a calling” can be “very triggering and offensive,” said Joel Katz, MD, 66, senior vice president for education at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The WSJ article noted for years, he led the residency program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“It’s code word for being taken advantage of,” Katz said in the article.

The WSJ article highlighted physicians long work hours, but also receive substantial pay. Doctors who spoke with WSJ said medicine’s “workaholic culture was overdue for a correction.” In 2024, many, many American doctors are not their own bosses – a health system is. There are personal factors too, such as starting a family, caring for young children or aging parents, and the need for personal care.

“We have to take care of ourselves in order to take care of other people,” hospitalist Kara-Grace Leventhal, MD, 40, said in the article. Leventhal is a clinical co-lead and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine.