How Doctors Are Wired

Abstract

If we want to address physician well-being, it makes sense for us to first think about how physicians think and what drives their engagement with their profession. While it is clear that in many dimensions physicians are not uniform, the shared education and training of physicians instills certain consistent characteristics that serve as foundations to engagement and enjoyment of the profession. We have discovered that attention to the needs and preferences formed by these characteristics when crafting an approach to physician well-being improves the likelihood that more physicians will benefit from our physician well-being program. By understanding how the training of physicians creates truth-seekers, problem solvers and inherently competitive natures, we can organize our projects and processes to feed the inherent needs that these characteristics create. Change is inevitable, and physicians want to have the best for their patients, therefore, our well-being is served by presenting issues, solutions and change in a format that involves the physicians, by explaing the rationale for change, involving their insights in making the decisions and considering ramifications, and providing data to help them see the progress of the change.