According to a recently published story, divorce rates amongst physicians might not be as common as you’d think.
Physicians Divorce Less Than Others
With the long hours and stressful day-to-day situations, the common thought was that physicians must be prone to divorce. But it seems they divorce less than dentists, health-care executives, and nurses, according to researchers that analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data.
“If you talk to physicians, there seems to be this conception or notion that doctors are more likely to be divorced, not only more than other health-care professionals, but the population at large,” said the study’s senior author, Anupam Jena, from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
More Females Than Males Divorce
But the researchers also found that divorce is more likely for female doctors. “Females traditionally bear more of the household and child-rearing responsibilities on average, and female physicians, if they have to do both that and maintain a job as a physician, that could lead to a lot of stress and lead to higher rates of divorce,” Jena said. “For women physicians, they appear to be essentially getting a raw deal because there is a trade-off they have to make, that unfortunately the male doctors don’t have to be making.”
The Study on Divorce
Researchers analyzed a group of 250,000 physicians, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, and health-care executives. They also looked at about 59,000 lawyers and 6.3 million non-health-care professionals. The breakdown of divorces looked like this:
- Physicians had a 24 percent likelihood of divorce;
- 23 percent for pharmacists;
- 25 percent for dentists;
- 31 percent for health-care executives;
- 33 percent among nurses;
- 27 percent among lawyers; and
- 35 percent for non-health-care workers
For questions regarding divorce contact the Law Offices of Korol and Velen, Certified Family Law Specialists.
Source: The Washington Post, Divorce among doctors isn’t as common as you think, study finds, February 19, 2015