Medicine: Physician attitudes on vocations and jobs

Doctors have mixed feelings on whether medicine is a vocation to service, a job, or somewhere in between.

“Is Medicine Still a Calling? Exploring physician attitudes about purpose in medicine,” is a new report with survey results by Jackson Physician Search and LocumTenens.com. It surveyed more than 1,200 physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) to explore how they feel about their work. They asked doctors if their leadership roles in health care are just a way to earn a paycheck, or if the profession is fulfilling a higher purpose and their desire to serve humanity.

“This data validates what we have seen anecdotally as we’ve matched over 10,000 clinicians with health care organizations over the last four decades,” Jackson Physician Search President Tony Stajduhar said in the company’s announcement of the data. “Passionate and engaged physicians and APPs gravitate toward roles that bring them closer to patients, problem-solving and making clinical decisions, and further away from administrative burdens that can lead to burnout.”

This slideshow presents some of the findings from the report. All data come from Jackson Physician Search and LocumTenens.com.