[Health status of physicians in Hungary: a representative study]

A growing body of evidence in the international literature suggests that the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity including suicide is high among physicians. In addition, data published by Hungarian researchers in the early 1990-ies showed high prevalence of somatic morbidity in this population. Based on these data, it is hypothesised that the prevalence of psychiatric and somatic morbidity is higher among physicians in Hungary compared to the white collar population.

To assess the psychiatric and somatic health status of physicians as well as the prevalence of role conflict among female physicians in Hungary using a representative sample.

Data for this epidemiological study were collected from 407 physicians using questionnaires. 1752 white collar female and male workers from a representative survey (Hungarostudy 2002) served as controls.

It is found that the prevalence of chronic somatic morbidity among both female and male physicians was significantly higher than that in the respective control groups. The prevalence of malignancies, diabetes, renal impairment, hypertension, myocardial infarction and cardiovascular diseases, and gastrointestinal ulcers was higher among male physicians compared to control. Female physicians exhibited higher prevalence of malignant diseases, hypertension, myocardial infarction, bronchial asthma, other pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases, allergies, gastrointestinal diseases including ulcer, ophthalmologic and gynaecological disorders compared with the normative population. This study is the first in Hungary to report a significantly higher prevalence of maternal reproductive morbidity including miscarriage, therapeutic termination of pregnancy, high-risk pregnancy among female physicians compared to women in the control group.

Correlation analyses confirmed a significant relationship between high prevalence of morbidity and long working hours (> 8 hours), severe anxiety and stress, and role conflict.