Medical marriages: time-sensitive bliss.

See also page 216 I n early 1964, folklore of the sanctity of medical marriages was shattered publically by none other than that stalwart television series General Hospital, the longest-running soap opera produced in Hollywood and, for a decade, one of the most viewed shows on television. Within its first 4 episodes, nurse Jessie Brewer (played by Emily McLaughlin) sought extramarital solace from her turbulent marriage to Dr Phil Brewer (Roy Thinnes). The long-held American belief that marriage to a physician was the way to happiness and an elevated socioeconomic status was fully exposed. How have medical marriages fared since? The article by Shanafelt et al in the current issue ofMayo Clinic Proceedings provides evidence that physicians and their spouses or partners make pretty good couples, with relationships (hereafter lumped under the termmarriages) that are as stable and satisfying or better than those of the general population. Shanafelt and his colleagues previously had surveyed a national sample of US physicians and asked them to provide the e-mail addresses of their spouses or partners for a potential additional study of medical marriages. A quarter of the more than 6000 physicians in the original survey provided the requested information. More than half (891) of their spouses or partners subsequently responded to a survey about their experiences in medical marriages. The investigators found that the overwhelmingly important factor that promoted increased marriage satisfaction by spouses and partners was the amount of time they spent awake with the reference physicians. The reference physicians’ specialties did not matter, nor did the number of hours per week that they worked as long as the couple carved out time to spend together. There were obvious stressors in the marriages of surveyed spouses and partners. The