Q&A: Gunderman discusses the rise of unhappiness in radiology

Feeling blue lately? Not as motivated as usual? You aren’t alone, according to a recent article from the Journal of the American College of Radiology.

In the article, Richard B. Gunderman, MD, PhD, and medical student Dessi Moneva, both from the Indiana University School of Medicine, examined data that shows unhappiness is high among radiologists.

Gunderman spoke with RadiologyBusiness.com about this topic and offered up some advice for radiologists who may be struggling with their own unhappiness.

RadiologyBusiness.com: In your own personal experiences as a radiologist, have you noticed a trend of unhappiness in the workplace among other radiologists?

Richard B. Gunderman, MD, PhD: I get to travel around a fair amount, and I feel that I hear pretty frequent expressions of dissatisfaction with the practice of radiology. There is no doubt that there are many radiologists who are just delighted to do their work every day, but in my own experience, I’m hearing expressions of dissatisfaction on a more frequent basis than I did before.

The sources of that are multiple. One is probably that people feel like they are working harder than ever—that the productivity of radiologists doing clinical work has been increasing—and simply working harder can wear people out. Certainly overwork is a risk factor for what is commonly called “burnout.”

I think a second factor is that many radiologists have less contact with patients and referring health professionals than they used to, so the radiologists is more likely to be somewhat isolated and have less contact with other people. And we know that one of the sources of satisfaction in work is simply affiliation—having relationships and conversations with people you work with.

I think another source of dissatisfaction might be bureaucracy, or red tape. Many people feel they are spending more time than they used to on activities that don’t directly relate to patient care, and that’s disheartening for people who went into medicine thinking they were going to devote their time and energy to fighting disease and improving people’s health.

RB: So it sounds like you think unhappiness in radiology is generally more of a problem now than it was in the past? Do you see it getting better or worse in the near future?

RG: My crystal ball is as good as anyone else’s, but I see some worrisome signs. At least some radiology groups, some hospitals, and some health systems are doing everything they can to improve productivity of radiologists, with productivity understood simply as the number of exams people perform or interpret and the number of RVUs they generate. And that’s a very incomplete and imperfect indicator of a radiologist’s true productivity.

The wider the gap gets between what radiologists believe makes a real contribution to patient care and to the clinical excellence of their colleagues and the way productivity is measured—which tends to be the number of clicks on a computer—the more disheartening that is, particularly for the people who are in the field for the best reasons.

RB: You suggest in the article that hobbies outside of radiology can help radiologists feel more happy on the job. Do you have any specific advice for radiologists on this subject?

RG: Radiologists are just as different from each other as any other group of human beings. They have different interests in terms of leisure activities and, I suspect, differing levels of need for leisure activities. I know people who are very happy to work very long hours and don’t seem to suffer terribly from it, and then there are other people who, if they had to work similar hours, would be absolutely miserable.

And, you know, even practices have different attitudes in this regard. Some practices really want each radiologist to be maximally productive over the course of the year, and other practices are happy to have fairly lengthy periods of paid time off and lighter clinical schedules.

I think the best thing I can say about that is not that everyone should jog three miles five days a week, make sure to get eight hours of sleep every night, or anything like that. Just that this something we need to recognize and reflect on.

RB: Is there anything else related to this topic you would like to share?

RG: While it’s very important to recognize and  respond effectively to unhappiness, it would be a mistake to think that, by simply addressing the causes of unhappiness, we are doing everything we need do to promote happiness.

It turns out that the things that make us unhappy—the “dissatisfiers”—are in many ways different from the things that bring us a positive sense of fulfillment. I’ve seen practices making the mistake of focusing all of their attention on reducing dissatisfiers and neglecting the things that bring a real sense of satisfaction or fulfillment.

RB: That sounds like some solid universal advice, no matter what walk of life.

RG: I think that’s right. These lessons apply pretty much across the board to every medical discipline and, frankly, to people who aren’t physicians.

This interview was edited for clarity and length. For additional coverage on unhappiness in radiology, RadiologyBusiness.com also reported on a recent JACR article that examined the rising number of radiologists who feel burned out by their job.