IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v52y2001i2p203-213.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Psychosocial challenges facing physicians of today

Author

Listed:
  • Arnetz, Bengt B.

Abstract

Fundamental changes in the organization, financing, and delivery of health care have added new stressors or opportunities to the medical profession. These new potential stressors are in addition to previously recognized external and internal ones. The work environment of physicians poses both psychosocial, ergonomic, and physico-chemical threats. The psychosocial work environment has, if anything, worsened. Demands at work increase at the same time as influence over one's work and intellectual stimulation from work decrease. In addition, violence and the threat of violence is another major occupational health problem physicians increasingly face. Financial constraint, managed care and consumerism in health care are other factors that fundamentally change the role of physicians. The rapid deployment of new information technologies will also change the role of the physician towards being more of an advisor and information provider. Many of the minor health problems will increasingly be managed by patients themselves and by non-physician professionals and practitioners of complementary medicine. Finally, the economic and social status of physicians are challenged which is reflected in a slower salary increase compared to many other professional groups. The picture painted above may be seen as uniformly gloomy. In reality, that is not the case. There is growing interest in and awareness of the importance of the psychosocial work environment for the delivery of high quality care. Physicians under stress are more likely to treat patients poorly, both medically and psychologically. They are also more prone to make errors of judgment. Studies where physicians' work environment in entire hospitals has been assessed, results fed-back, and physicians and management have worked with focused improvement processes, have demonstrated measurable improvements in the ratings of the psychosocial work environment. However, it becomes clear from such studies that quality of the leadership and the physician team impact on the overall work atmosphere. Physicians unaware of the goals of the department as well as the hospital, that do not receive management performance feedback, and who do not get annual performance appraisals and career guidance, rate their psychosocial environment as more adverse than their colleagues. There is also a great need to offer personally targeted competence development plans. Heads of department and senior physicians rate their work environment as of higher quality than more junior and mid-career physicians. More specifically, less senior physicians perceive similar work demands as their senior colleagues but rate influence over work, skills utilization, and intellectual stimulation at work as significantly worse. In order to combat negative stressors in the physicians' work environment, enhancement initiatives should be considered both at the individual, group, and structural level. Successful resources used by physicians to manage the stress of everyday medicine should be identified. Physicians are a key group to ensure a well-functioning health care system. In order to be able to change and adapt to the ongoing evolution of the Western health care system, more focus needs to be put on the psychosocial aspects of physicians' work.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnetz, Bengt B., 2001. "Psychosocial challenges facing physicians of today," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 203-213, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:2:p:203-213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00220-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lara Guariglia & Irene Terrenato & Laura Iacorossi & Giovanna D’Antonio & Sonia Ieraci & Stefania Torelli & Fabiola Nazzicone & Fabrizio Petrone & Anita Caruso, 2023. "Moral Distress in Oncology: A Descriptive Study of Healthcare Professionals," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(8), pages 1-10, April.
    2. Li, Jian & Yang, Wenjie & Cho, Sung-il, 2006. "Gender differences in job strain, effort-reward imbalance, and health functioning among Chinese physicians," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(5), pages 1066-1077, March.
    3. Hyde, Martin & Jappinen, Paavo & Theorell, Tores & Oxenstierna, Gabriel, 2006. "Workplace conflict resolution and the health of employees in the Swedish and Finnish units of an industrial company," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(8), pages 2218-2227, October.
    4. Dobson, Roy Thomas & Lepnurm, Rein & Struening, Elmer, 2005. "Developing a scale for measuring professional equity among Canadian physicians," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 263-266, July.
    5. Ferda Erdem & Murat Atalay, 2017. "The effect of health transformation policies on the resident physicians' perception of the medical profession in Turkey," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 189-216, April.
    6. Wallace, Jean Elizabeth & Lemaire, Jane, 2007. "On physician well being--You'll get by with a little help from your friends," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(12), pages 2565-2577, June.
    7. Abdurrahim Emhan & Safa Elkefi & Onur Asan, 2022. "Predictors of Healthcare Professionals’ Work Difficulty Perception during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Study of Work Environment in a Pandemic Hospital," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-10, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:2:p:203-213. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.