Artikel
Children and career: survey on work-life balance among German Neurosurgeons
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Veröffentlicht: | 8. Juni 2016 |
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Gliederung
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Objective: Striking a balance between children and career especially in surgical disciplines is difficult. We designed a national survey to reflect the present work-life balance of female and male neurosurgeons of different training levels with and without children.
Method: A 46-item, web-based survey was sent to 996 neurosurgeons.
Results: 32.2% of residents, 73.8% of consultants, 77.8% of senior consultants and 91% of directors had children. 72% of all kids were under the age of 6 years. 82.5% of all participants were married or lived in a solid partnership. Female senior consultants and directors had significantly less children than their male colleagues of the same position (p<0.0001). 57% of female and 47% of male neurosurgeons had the desire for (more) children, declining with age and position. The cause for absent wish for children in women was work-related (42%), whereas in men it was the already existing number of children in 68.2% and only for reasons related to work in 18.1%. 35.2% of male and 64.5% of female neurosurgeons stated that they would be academically more sucessful if they were childless (p<0.0001). Women more often did not return to the same working place after family-leave (p=0.08). In 90.4% no maternity covers were done by the employers but labour was substituted by co-workers. Part-time work and temporary contracts were significantly dependent on parenthood (p<0.0001). Female neurosurgeons experience a significantly higher double burden regarding work and private life (p<0.0001). In cases of children's illness, female neurosurgeons more often took the responsibility for childcare (p<0.0001) as they can seldom rely on spouses at home – in contrast to men (p<0.0001). 29.6% state organizational difficulties when participating in on-call service, dependent on training levels and parenthood (p<0.001). 44.3% report that extra educational training opportunities are not compatible with family life. In general, satisfaction with work-life balance rose with age of neurosurgeons and their children, position and parenthood. 70% of parents suggested that compatibility with family life would be improved by strict adherence to or more flexible working time.
Conclusions: Children make a substantial contribution to overall life-quality. Nevertheless, children still mean a slower academic advancement of mothers and imply a higher work-life burden, especially among residents. Generally, compatibility with family life with neurosurgery would be realized better through a more reliable working time.