Physicians' professional performance: An occupational health psychology perspective

In modern medical practice, multiple demands and high workloads challenge physician well-being. Physician well-being is considered a precondition for optimal health care. Physicians’ work-related well-being can be indicated by their work engagement, which is considered the opposite of burnout. We studied the association between physician work engagement and their professional performance, in physicians’ roles as doctors and teachers. In their doctor role, physician well-being or work engagement could positively affect their clinical performance, including interpersonal aspects (such as informing patients) and patient satisfaction. On the other hand, when patients evaluated physicians’ outpatient care behaviors, work-engaged physicians did not necessarily perform better than their low-engaged peers. Exploring physicians’ teacher roles, we did observe better teaching performance of engaged physicians. That is, physicians who were specifically engaged in their teacher work were evaluated by residents as better performing supervisors. On average however, physicians were more engaged for their doctor work than for their teacher work. To foster physician work engagement, the job resources autonomy and opportunities to learn and develop could be optimized. In addition, work engagement in specific physician roles could be facilitated by individualized career paths and faculty development programs, as (partly) different personality traits showed to facilitate doctor versus teacher work engagement. Given the positive associations between physician work engagement and aspects of their performance, physician well-being could be adopted as one of the potentially helpful ingredients in policies for optimal patient care and residency training.