just curious

[Ookla]

<p>

Uh, I hate to have to be the person to have to point this out, but being a practicing MD (which, as you put it, involves seeing patients) is not exactly the most family-friendly lifestyle either. I know numerous divorced doctors. It’s not altogether easy to maintain a family life when you’re always on call, as plenty of doctors are. And then there is the issue of doctors basically exploiting their wives to get them through the lean years of med-school and internship/residency, only to dump them for trophy girlfriends when they start making real money. -Sakky

</p>

<p>I found this in the graduate school forum. Just wondering if the “dumping of wives for trophy girlfriends” actually occurs commonly enough for it to be generalized like that.</p>

[ASMAJ]

<p>I don’t think its common. I think the divorces in medicine occur more often because the husband or wife are not happy with the lifestyle they are living. Its gets hard when you don’t see your significant other enough for 3-10 yrs because of their work hours. Divorces rates vary, but usually higher in surgery because they work more (80 hr rules are broken all the time).</p>

[bruinboy]

<p>ehh…who’s to say that this doesn’t happen in other fields like law and business. there are, believe it or not, not-so-ethical people in every profession. I personally don’t think it’s that common, but that’s just based on family/close family friends who are MD’s.</p>

[LWMD]

<p>In my circle of colleagues, divorce is surprisingly uncommon – I would have to say lower than the national average. Some of my colleagues have been married for over 30 years. My husband and I have been married for 23 yrs.
Thinking back over the years, I can’t think of anyone who left for a “trophy spouse” – and I say spouse, because of the number of women MDs I work with.
I don’t agree with Sakky’s generalization.
Medicine isn’t the only profession with long hours. And marriage is work for everyone.</p>

[my_0.02]

<p>Here is a 1997 article from Hopkins (discussed before). Note that the study spans a period when divorce became acceptable. The 30 year follow-up divorce rates for physicians quoted do not seem to be much different than those for the general public today.

After decades of following 1,118 physicians who graduated from the Hopkins School of Medicine between 1948 and 1964, researchers found a 51 percent divorce rate for psychiatrists and 33 percent for surgeons, rates higher than those for internists (24 percent), pediatricians and pathologists (each 22 percent). The study revealed a 32 percent overall physician divorce rate.

<a href=“http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/janmar97/mar1797/briefs.html[/url]”>http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/janmar97/mar1797/briefs.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/336/11/800[/url]”>http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/336/11/800&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Physicians compared to lawyers (1999, based on 1990 census data):

The divorce rate among lawyers appears to be higher than the divorce rate among other professionals. Felicia Baker LeClere of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Contemporary Society compared the incidence of divorce among lawyers to the incidence of divorce among doctors, using data from the 1990 census. LeClere found that the percentage of lawyers who are divorced is higher than the percentage of doctors who are divorced and that the difference is particularly pronounced among women.

<a href=“http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/legl2f99.htm[/url]”>http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/legl2f99.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Here is a statistic dense divorce info site with per capita per annum divorce rates (through 2005): <a href=“http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html[/url]”>http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Marital stressors for physicians include using workplace interaction models for spousal communication; A specific example would be treating your spouse like a nurse.</p>