Part 1 of the survey insights, throws light on the objectives, methodology and broad contours of the survey that was conducted with 226 doctors online.
 
Part 2 of the series reveals finer details of the survey underscoring  correlations between state of happiness and other factors as reported by the doctors.

 

 

Unhappy vs. Happy doctors

 

Doctors rated themselves on a scale of 1 -5, between happy and unhappy. As the results below show, the stress of the profession notwithstanding, a majority i.e. 67% feel happy doing their work. In contrast, 25% reported being unhappy.

 

Are doctors seeing too many patients than what they consider ideal?

 

We attempted to know what was the ideal number of patients that doctors would like to see in a day, and how does that compare versus the actual number of patients that they see in practice. Further, we wanted to understand how the results correlate with their state of happiness or unhappiness.

 

As the chart below shows, 70% of the doctors who also reported being unhappy said that they see more patients than what they consider ideal. This number was about 42% for doctors who felt happy. In particular,  34% of the 'unhappy' doctors reported seeing 2X or more patients than what they considered ideal. Over the entire sample, the ideal number of patients reported by doctors was 30 per day on average versus 43 per day in practice i.e. about 40% higher.

 

 

Which factors contribute the most to stressed/exhausted state among Doctors?

 

Delving into the reasons behind, we asked the  doctors to list and rate the factors, by severity, that they believed, contributed to stress. The insights generated from this question could offer clues on how to improve the quality of life for doctors.
 
Top 3 factors leading to a feeling of stress as voted by doctors are: (1) Poor compensation/income (2) Feeling of a lack of safety at workplace and (3) Lack of professional fulfillment. However, when we split the responses by doctors that reported being happy versus unhappy, many more unhappy doctors [~70%] reported lack of professional fulfillment as most severe factor to state of stress versus happy doctors [~40%].  Interestingly, doctors do not themselves consider seeing too many patients a day as a key factor behind stress.

 

 

Ways to de-stress outside work

Doctors use various ways to destress outside work, but clearly, spending time with friends and family is the most preferred activity [with 82% doctors]. 55% doctors said that they liked watching/reading content such as movies, books etc. while 50% said that they try to catch as much sleep as possible!

 

 

 

In the next part of this series, we would explore some other insights revealed from this survey specially about how doctors consider safety in light of recent incidents of attack and what they feel is the most effective way to deal with this problem. So, keep watching this space! 

 

Disclaimer

We have presented the data and facts as they are without generalizing the results as a reflection of the views of entire Indian doctors population. The demographic profile of the survey participants [shown above] may differ from the population of all Indian Doctors. Also, limiting the sample to the Internet channel only may introduce bias in the results. We have also shown correlation between different factors and state of happiness or unhappiness, which should not be interpreted as implying cause and effect.

 

Read more on this series at:

• Doctors’ Lifestyle, Work and Motivation survey – Part 1