[Alumni of medical sciences and their life satisfaction]

Medical doctors are especially burdened with psychological and social aspects of their occupation. These circumstances may lead to low life satisfaction and substance abusing behaviour and burn out symptoms are probable. In this paper we investigate, if alumni of medical sciences show lower life satisfaction compared to their peers. If so, we want to know, which factors influence this result. This survey is based on n = 671 alumni of medicine in seven German universities.

The life satisfaction of alumni differs significantly from the peer sample. Outstanding are the highly significant and powerful differences to the scale "leisure". It was evident by an iterative regression that the variables "extreme input at work", "instrumentality/masculinity", "effort-reward imbalance", "expressivity/femininity" as well as "career self-efficacy-expectation", clarify 43 % of the variance in the group of alumni working by the time of enquiry.

The results point out, that already alumni of medical science are in the "circle of burn-out". Their life satisfaction is more affected, if the workload is perceived high and the perceived benefits are low. Individual as well as external aspects influence life satisfaction and can be a starting-point for prevention.