Aim: Academic careers often place the burden of research on top of clinical work. This conflict denotes a demanding task especially in surgical disciplines, such as orthopaedics and traumatology. Driven by changes in the social system, concerning, e.g., leisure and parentship, the future organisation of the academic workplace needs to address these individual issues. With the aim to evaluate individual motivation towards combining research, clinical work and private life and to receive suggestions for improvement we conducted a survey addressing residents employed in the orthopaedic and traumatological departments of German university hospitals.
Method: With the support of the "Junges Forum der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie (DGOU)", a survey, containing 21 questions about occupational and private issues, was sent out to the orthopaedic and traumatologic departments of 25 university hospitals in Germany. The focus of the questions was set on motivation, priorities and personal resources. It was possible to answer the questions by e-mail; later an anonymous online version of the survey was set in action as well.
Results: Completely answered forms were received from n = 105 physicians, of which 88 % were judged as active researchers. Over 50 % of the participants were satisfied with their clinical career and with their research results. 96 % of the survey participants felt sure that most of the research could only be managed during spare time. A majority of the participants supported the idea of receiving leave of absence from clinical duties for research in order to serialise the scientific and clinical careers. Interestingly, when focusing on priority settings, salary aspects were ranked as low as research interests, falling behind the wish for a more intensive surgical training and more leisure time.
Conclusions: Individual solutions seem to be necessary to achieve a scheduled efficiency of clinical and research careers. This includes structural developments (like a professionally headed lab) and the establishment of dynamic clinical structures. It seems possible that the clinical organisation of physicians in teams might offer solutions to cope with the demands of surgical training and clinical care on the one hand and research on the other hand.
(c) Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart . New York.