Love and medicine: Does like attract like?  

With St Valentine’s Day on the horizon, The Dorsal View turns its attention to affairs of the heart.

And as always, we look to the research for answers.

The notion of ‘medical marriages’ has been studied for some time. The research parameters have broadened in recent years, as, for example, more women have entered the profession and medical staff have become more culturally diverse. As a result, the examination of the topic has become more nuanced. For instance, most older cross-sectional surveys sampled predominantly married doctors in heterosexual relationships.

Overall, the notion of ‘medical marriages’ seems, on closer inspection, to be a bit of a myth. Figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that when it comes to females who married within their occupation, 36 per cent of female doctors married other doctors. This compares with 62 per cent for publicans, 58 per cent of taxi drivers, 49 per cent of gardaí, and a whopping 80 per cent of farmers. Other professions that married less within their occupation were shopkeepers (35 per cent); bus drivers (34 per cent); dentists (25 per cent); and veterinarians (24 per cent). Read into that what you will. The figures are similar for men, with 35 per cent of male doctors marrying within their profession.

“Generally, people are most likely to get married within their own occupation,” says the CSO. “However, the analysis indicated that people are also likely to marry people in other occupations that they work closely with, or where they may share similar working hours.” Doctor-nurse marriages would be a prime example.

Across the pond, an American Medical Association article, using Medscape survey data, showed that in the US, approximately 80 per cent of physicians are married, and of those, almost 20 per cent of these were married to other doctors. The survey included more than 10,000 physicians.

One of the respondents, a medical doctor with six children and in a doctor-doctor marriage, offered a few tips from experience for a healthy relationship. She and her husband found the balance to be fairly easy when they were both in residency, as they both had consistent income and were often on-call on alternative shifts, which gave them space to see friends and maintain their own social lives.

However, with the advent of private practice, things changed: “Throw in a new community, a mortgage, and a baby. Lots of changes had to occur,” that particular doctor responded. Sound familiar?

Her tips include the following: Accept help. In this particular case, this meant hiring a nanny, therefore freeing-up more time for the marriage itself. Create a schedule for the whole family, which means structured routines and “working hard on preparing for the next day at night”. Staying organised simply is making sure everything is in its proper place, which saves time and stress.

That all looks good on paper, but of course relationships aren’t played-out on paper. So, what if the marriage doesn’t work – how many doctor-doctor marriages end? A 2024 study in the Annals of Surgery compared the divorce rate among surgical and non-surgical physicians. Their analysis showed that among 3,171 surgeons and 51,660 non-surgeon physicians respectively, 21.3 per cent (676/3,171) of surgeons had been through a divorce, compared with 17.9 per cent (9,252/51,660) of non-surgeon physicians – a 19 per cent increase in the risk of divorce. Both groups were similarly aged (51.6 and 50.2 years, respectively) and predominantly male (82.9 per cent and 61.9 per cent, respectively).

“Both surgeons and physicians have lower divorce prevalence than the general population,” the authors concluded. “Surgeons exhibit [a higher] prevalence of divorce compared with non-surgeon physicians, with measured demographic and work characteristics insufficient to explain this difference.”

But let’s not end on a negative note. “[A]s far as intimate relationships go, doctors are as diverse and vulnerable as the rest of the community, perhaps more so,” wrote the authors of another study. “Attending to relational health in doctors is likely to have pay-off for doctors, their families, and patients alike.”