Keeping doctors healthy: A salutogenic perspective

Doctors make decisions while working in sometimes turbulent health systems. This can lead to professional stress caused by a wide variety of work-related factors, which have their detrimental emotional and physical consequences. This article looks at A. Antonovsky's (1979) salutogenetic model as a useful way to examine and treat occupational stress among doctors. Salutogenesis is a view of health that examines how to preserve health (salutogenesis) rather than looking at how illness is caused (pathogenesis). The sense of coherence concept comprises 3 main components: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. In this article, the authors attempted to look at this model in terms of preventing physician burnout, which has enormous emotional, physical, and economic costs. Their proposal was to offer physicians in-service training, educational programs, individual supervision, and support groups to promote their work and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. This should enable their work to become more coherent and meaningful.