Discussions of morale and burnout in radiology typically focus on the work life of radiologists. We assess factors such as the intensity and duration of work, its impact on the health of patients, and the amount of red tape radiologists deal with on a daily basis. However, work is only part of a health professional’s life, and for many radiologists, life outside of work also influences overall fulfillment. To gain a truly comprehensive view of the matter, it is necessary to consider the relationship between work and personal life.
Psychologists often conceptualize such matters in terms of work satisfaction and life satisfaction, typically construing satisfaction in one of two ways . The first way of thinking about satisfaction relies on a hedonic conception, derived from the Greek term for pleasure. A hedonic view of satisfaction says that people seek to attain pleasure and avoid pain. The other perspective on satisfaction is eudaemonia or flourishing, the extent to which people perceive that they are doing and living well. Because most radiologists do not work to have fun, we adopt the latter approach here.
Segmentation, Compensation, and Synergy
Broadly speaking, there are three different models for thinking about the relationship between fulfillment in work and life . The first, sometimes labeled the segmentation hypothesis, posits that the two are unrelated. People can be miserable both in work and in life, miserable in one but fulfilled in the other, or fulfilled in both, but how a person feels about one of the domains offers no insight into their experience in the other. On this view, those seeking to enhance fulfillment in work would be wasting their time to concern themselves with fulfillment outside of it.
There is some evidence for the segmentation hypothesis. For example, each of us can probably think of colleagues who seem quite happy with their work lives but are miserable at home, just as we can think of others who are happy at home but miserable at work. In the aggregate, however, there seems to be little empirical support for the view that work and life fulfillment reflect different factors. Most studies suggest that the two are correlated with one another, whether negatively (the compensation hypothesis) or positively (the synergy hypothesis) .
The compensation hypothesis holds that low levels of fulfillment in one part of life spur efforts to increase it in the other. If radiologists are unhappy at work, they will try extra hard to find happiness in activities and relationships outside of work, whereas if people are unhappy at home, they will exert themselves more to find fulfillment at work. This hypothesis makes sense, at least to the extent that the people who are unhappy in one domain might spend more time and energy in the other, if for no other reason than to avoid the domain of life in which they are unhappy.
One unfortunate implication of the compensation hypothesis, at least among employers, would be to seek out job candidates who are unhappy with their home lives, in hopes that they will devote more time to work. Again, however, there is relatively little empirical evidence to support the compensation hypothesis. Although many people are relatively fulfilled in one domain and unfulfilled in the other, studies have failed to demonstrate any causal association . It would be a mistake to assert that making people miserable in one domain increases their fulfillment in the other.
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Fostering Relatedness
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Conclusions
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References
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