Do ID physicians have a good quality of life?
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Click here to read the Cover Story, "‘Negative Fauci effect’? ID reckons with disappointing Match Day."
Physicians have cited overwork and burnout as contributing factors making it difficult to recruit physicians for a career in infectious diseases.
We asked Eli Wilber, MD, an infectious disease fellow at Emory University School of Medicine, and Ishminder Kaur, MD, medical director of the pediatric antimicrobial stewardship program at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital and assistant clinical professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine, if ID physicians have a good quality of life.
Eli Wilber, MD
It depends on who you ask. ID outranks most other specialties when physicians are asked if they would choose the same career again. Yet, the current generation of medical residents are shying away from the field.
Why this discrepancy? ID fellowship represents a significant investment of 2 to 3 years, for which the payoff is not higher expected compensation (indeed the opposite), or the ability to do a restricted procedure (for example, cardiac catheterization), but rather a refined cognitive skill set. This imbalance between a tangible opportunity cost in delayed life events (for example, “real job,” house, parenthood) and less tangible rewards results in only the most passionate residents choosing to pursue ID training. The “lukewarm” ID enthusiasts become hospitalists or primary care physicians. Our challenge as a specialty is to decrease this imbalance by clearly demonstrating to junior trainees the fulfillment in diverse ID careers (for example, antimicrobial stewardship, hospital epidemiology, public health) and by directly confronting the opportunity cost of extended training through innovative means such as improving fellow compensation or targeted training programs.
So, is ID fellowship worth it? For me, the answer is unequivocally yes; however, the marketplace is telling us that action is needed to ensure that more trainees feel the same.
Ishminder Kaur, MD
I think it depends on how we define quality of life, and it may mean very different things to different people. But overall, I think for physicians, our quality of life depends on work satisfaction and happiness with our chosen subspecialty and whether that continues over time, as well as work/life balance. Sometimes that is blurred, especially in cognitive specialties — we don’t clock in, we don’t clock out, we live and breathe ID.
I think it depends on the person. For me, I love this specialty. It’s a decision I took my time to make, although infectious disease was always my first instinct. It’s fascinating, intriguing, challenging and keeps me mentally stimulated, and that continues to date. I think if you find your true calling in life, there are going to be ups and downs no matter what field of medicine you pick. If you feel good about whatever you are doing and contributing, and feel happy about it, I think it’s worth going into ID.
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