Does Financial Stability Mean Happiness for Orthopaedic Surgeons?

This year’s Medscape’s 2014 Lifestyle Report dives deeply into the lives of physicians outside their practices. The 2014 report, which covers 25 specialties and includes close to 32,000 responses, examines physician health (both physical and spiritual), political beliefs, marital status, and happiness both at work and outside of the office. The report shows that orthopaedists are the most financially stable physicians among the 25 specialties. Family physicians and internists are at the opposite end of the spectrum, with less than 6 out of 10 feeling they have adequate or more than adequate savings. On the happiness scale (login required), 67% of orthopaedists said they are very or extremely happy at home, while 42% of them report being extremely/very happy at work. The least happy physicians at work are family and emergency medicine physicians; only 36% of respondents in those specialties said they were happy at work, with internists and radiologists following closely at their heels.