Medical Specialty and the Incidence of Divorce

Abstract

The demands inherent in certain practice specialties are popularly believed to contribute to the risk of divorce among physicians.1,2 Several demographic and personal factors thought to affect the risk of divorce may also influence medical students' choice of specialty and therefore confound the relation between medical specialty and divorce.3,4 To characterize the risk of divorce associated with medical specialty, we examined data from the Johns Hopkins Precursors Study. We found that the cumulative incidence of divorce among 1118 married physicians was 29 percent after 30 years of marriage and that the choice of specialty was independently associated with . . .