Background: Medical academics are trained as medical practitioners’ and scientists. Their high workload combined with concern for patients and colleagues, and responsibilities associated to family- and social life can compromise sufficient self-care, restitution and rest. Exposure to high, and often, conflicting demands can compromise physicians work satisfaction, health and wellbeing. Growing evidence points to major negative consequences of physician’s ill-health to healthcare systems by affecting recruitment and retention of physicians, workplace productivity and efficiency, and quality of patient care and patient safety in terms of medical errors, recovery and treatment adherence. No sufficiently powered, comprehensive international study that include different levels of organizational data, have by now documented.
Aim: A sufficiently powered international longitudinal study with different type of organizational data on determinants in the organization, work environment, management and organizational culture to investigate the prevalence, interaction, manifestation or the effect of strain among physicians in academic medicine as a basis for both scientific knowledge and organizational interventions.
Method: Longitudinal data by 1) Document analysis of national framework and policy, 2) Hospital statistics of their work force, 3) in-depth interviews and prospective survey data from 4) N = 3 500 physicians from HOUPE phase I and 5) N = 6 500 physicians of HOUPE phase II in all partner countries. The survey data was collected in 2005 with repeated measure of survey data in 2012.
Participants: All physicians permanently employed at each University Hospital at the time of data collection. Phase I: The participants were university hospital physicians in Sweden (N= 2 300), Norway (N= 800) Iceland (N= 400) and Italy (N= 900). Phase II included all four countries of phase I in addition to university hospital physicians from Hungary (N= 800), the Netherlands (N= 800) and Austria (N= 500).
The questionnaire comprised 110 items altogether with the following measurements: 1) Physician Career Path Questionnaire (PCPQ), 2) The General Nordic Questionnaire for Psychological and Social Factors at Work (QPSNordic) , 3)Patient confidentiality and personal support (CBS) , 4) Mini Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (MOLBI) 5)General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) , 6) Work-Family conflict and 7) Gender and Ethnicity analyses.
Results: Results have contributed to empirical knowledge into the processes and mechanisms that affects physicians’ career, work conditions, satisfaction and health. Information about the character of work conditions and career choices of physicians have provided basis for organizational interventions to make each university hospitals more resource efficient and innovative by professional and organizational culture, conditions of employment and work, and health services provided.