Work-related behavior and experience patterns and predictors of mental health in German physicians in medical practice

Background and Objectives: Work-related stress and burnout among physicians are of increasing relevance. The aim of this study was to investigate work-related behavior and experience patterns and predictors of mental health of physicians working in medical practice in Germany. Methods: We surveyed a stratified, random sample of 900 physicians from different specialties. The questionnaire included the standardized instruments Work-related Behavior and Experience Pattern (AVEM) and the Short Form-12 Health Survey (SF-12). Results: Only one third of physicians reported high or very high general satisfaction with their job, but 64% would choose to study medicine again. Only 18% of physicians presented a healthy behavior and experience pattern. Almost 40% presented a pattern of reduced motivation to work, 21% were at risk of overexertion, and 22% at risk for burnout. Willingness to study medicine again, fulfilled job expectations, professional years, marital status, and behavior patterns were significant predictors of mental health and accounted for 35.6% of the variance in mental health scores. Job-related perceptions also had a significant effect on burnout. Conclusions: The strong influence of work-related perceptions suggests a need for realistic expectation management in medical education, as well as support in stress management and coping strategies during medical training.

Longitudinal analysis of patterns and predictors of changes in self-reported adherence to antiretroviral therapy: Swiss HIV Cohort Study

Adherence to combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) is a dynamic process, however, changes in adherence behavior over time are insufficiently understood.

Behavioral and neural correlates of perceived and imagined musical timbre

The generality of findings implicating secondary auditory areas in auditory imagery was tested by using a timbre imagery task with fMRI. Another aim was to test whether activity in supplementary motor area (SMA) seen in prior studies might have been related to subvocalization. Participants with moderate musical background were scanned while making similarity judgments about the timbre of heard or imagined musical instrument sounds. The critical control condition was a visual imagery task. The pattern of judgments in perceived and imagined conditions was similar, suggesting that perception and imagery access similar cognitive representations of timbre. As expected, judgments of heard timbres, relative to the visual imagery control, activated primary and secondary auditory areas with some right-sided asymmetry. Timbre imagery also activated secondary auditory areas relative to the visual imagery control, although less strongly, in accord with previous data. Significant overlap was observed in these regions between perceptual and imagery conditions. Because the visual control task resulted in deactivation of auditory areas relative to a silent baseline, we interpret the timbre imagery effect as a reversal of that deactivation. Despite the lack of an obvious subvocalization component to timbre imagery, some activity in SMA was observed, suggesting that SMA may have a more general role in imagery beyond any motor component.