Women doctor and nurses more prone to work–life imbalance

 

Being a health provider  is a tough and stressful job. In any hospital, work goes on during  day and night. Rather many times nights are more heavy and challenging. The systems at odd hours are run by doctors and nurses. Continuous requirement to do odd time shifts, hard training and work demands tend to affect the overall work-life balance of doctors and nurses.

For women, it is particularly more stressful. As at some stage of life, both professional and personal roles become too demanding.  Expectation at both fronts is guided by the idea of perfection. Perception of deviation from the ideal or little imperfection   can lead to sense of aversion, linked to  average performance for them.  If they try to match the ambitions, want more in career, from the partner, children, or themselves, face the real risk of burn out. The cognizance  that perfection cannot be matched or arduous to achieve, in their circumstances, is hard to be realized  at both places.   The quest and  passion of  the women doctors or nurses, to seek perfection at both places, makes them  more prone for  burnout. This  is  a consequence to  a grave exhaustion, in their bid  to balance everything.  Woman doctors and nurses, are specially  more susceptible to stress of a kind,  as most of them face the same ordeal.

Family priority:

Perception of role identity at home  is little different on  being a woman doctor/nurse.  Male doctors are in a better position to  prioritize their work duties over their family duties  in order to  provide financial support for their families. For female doctors , there is a natural tendency to  prioritize their family life.

  Inflexibility or shift working a routine:    

         The  issues will always remain, like spending long hours at work due to inflexibility, or requirement to do shift  duties , need to stay more with patient and training requirements. For females it is very common and  frequently  lead to an imbalance between work and family duties.   More  time spent at work has an direct impact    on family requirements. Sometimes  there are financial requirements of the family, for which they are forced to  negate the effect on family duties.  In such situations they are unable to successfully complete these family duties.

High career ambitions:

Higher  education leads  to ambitions for higher social recognition and better career orientation. These goals are another  reason for taking this dual stress.  In order to correct this  imbalance, many  women doctors  expose themselves to unsolicited job stress. This reflect  in lives as chronic lack of time and  leads to pressure and stress.  The mentioned stresses and strains could lead in the long term to irreversible, physical signs of wear and tear, as well as to negative effects on the human cardiovascular and immune systems.

   Prolonged and odd working hours:

In medical profession,  simply working hard is not enough anymore. To get ahead, a rigorous training, prolonged working hours are  new standards. There is very  little time left to be divided   among relationships, kids, and sleep.

 

Conflict by Perception:

The conflict of work and family is further exacerbated  by perceived deviation from being a  good worker  at  work place and  ideal mother at  home. At work  place, they are looked as less dedicated and similarly at home as well.  Lack of organizational support  for doctors/nurses is main reason for these kind of imbalance.  They are squeezed in between  pressures at work and demands at home.

Extending families:

These day, pressures are so high that  many young women doctors,  want to just stay at home and do housework without having careers. May  give up careers to have children. It strikes to young doctors as a surprise, simply how difficult it is to build a family. The learning curve of taking care of family along with professional  responsibilities is too steep. In such situations, when everything is compounded, with  workload, it becomes utterly exhaustive.

Motherhood:

Breaks taken for family requirements may be taken as red flags, by employers. Delivery and feeding child become  difficult tasks specially in clinical branches, where long duties are routine.

Motherhood needs to be squeezed in between the requirement of profession. Changes in schedule or adjustments made are perceived as “being different”.

While women are increasingly represented in the medical field, they still face challenges balancing work and home life. The frustrations manifest in  burnout and dissatisfaction within a field they once enjoyed.

also read: work-life imbalance for doctors/nurse & consequences