Religion, Worldviews, and Socialization: Medical Students’ Sense of Calling to the Medical Profession
Aaron Franzen, PhD, Assistant Professor, Hope College
When assessing how religion matters, much of sociology historically focused on institutional religious ties with other domains of life, such as politics. More recently, however, focus has begun to shift towards how religion is present within people’s everyday lives. This ‘everyday religion’ (Ammerman 2007) focuses on how “a bricolage of meanings” (Cadge and Konieczny 2014) are found within different social contexts. Medicine is no different.
I explore medical students’ perception of calling to the profession of medicine. Calling is historically rooted within religious contexts, as religion tended to supply the language and cultural tools to connect one’s work with broader meaning and purpose in life. More broadly, we know that perceptions of calling are tied to life satisfaction, employee well-being, and within medicine specifically lower rates of burnout. High proportions of primary care physicians report a strong sense of calling, and this is related to the respondent’s religiosity (Yoon et al. 2015). We do not, however, know whether this is true for medical students or whether calling develop post-training. Religious/spiritual medical students report decreased compartmentalization (Balboni et al. 2015), possibly indicating religion’s ability to create more cohesive, coherent lives. Kent et al. (2016) show this may be the case as one’s attachment to God forms the meaningful context in which a calling can take shape.
While it is hypothesized here that measures of religiosity/spirituality will be important for understanding perceptions of calling amongst physicians-to-be, additional characteristics need to be taken into account. First, if calling depends on connecting one’s occupation to meaningful contexts, then broader meaning in life may be influential. Second, vocational identity is a general sensation that one’s work is meaningful, and increased salience of vocation likely explains some variation in the distribution of calling within medical students even though the two are not coterminous. Third, as medicine tends to have a “familial aggregation effect” (Tran et al. 2017), family members who are physicians may increase perceptions of calling. Fourth, as exposure to positive examples from others can connect positive moral emotions tied to work (Vianello, Galliani, and Haidt 2010), exposure to “good” attendings while in medical school could increase perceptions of calling. Finally, while being mistreated by faculty is highly common and is tied to increased levels of burnout (Cook et al. 2014), I hypothesize that this could inspire a sense of duty to be the better doctor.
I assess these relationships with calling with data from Project on the Good Physician (2011). This is longitudinal data of medical students nested within 24 medical schools across the US. I find that the relationship between religion and calling is somewhat mixed. Specifically, while religion/spirituality is important in the expected direction, increased congregational attendance is inversely related to perceptions of calling, differing from practicing physicians. Vocational identity, meaning in life, physicians in the family, and exposure to both good and bad physicians correlate with increased perceptions of calling as expected.
When assessing how religion matters, much of sociology historically focused on institutional religious ties with other domains of life, such as politics. More recently, however, focus has begun to shift towards how religion is present within people’s everyday lives. This ‘everyday religion’ (Ammerman 2007) focuses on how “a bricolage of meanings” (Cadge and Konieczny 2014) are found within different social contexts. Medicine is no different.
I explore medical students’ perception of calling to the profession of medicine. Calling is historically rooted within religious contexts, as religion tended to supply the language and cultural tools to connect one’s work with broader meaning and purpose in life. More broadly, we know that perceptions of calling are tied to life satisfaction, employee well-being, and within medicine specifically lower rates of burnout. High proportions of primary care physicians report a strong sense of calling, and this is related to the respondent’s religiosity (Yoon et al. 2015). We do not, however, know whether this is true for medical students or whether calling develop post-training. Religious/spiritual medical students report decreased compartmentalization (Balboni et al. 2015), possibly indicating religion’s ability to create more cohesive, coherent lives. Kent et al. (2016) show this may be the case as one’s attachment to God forms the meaningful context in which a calling can take shape.
While it is hypothesized here that measures of religiosity/spirituality will be important for understanding perceptions of calling amongst physicians-to-be, additional characteristics need to be taken into account. First, if calling depends on connecting one’s occupation to meaningful contexts, then broader meaning in life may be influential. Second, vocational identity is a general sensation that one’s work is meaningful, and increased salience of vocation likely explains some variation in the distribution of calling within medical students even though the two are not coterminous. Third, as medicine tends to have a “familial aggregation effect” (Tran et al. 2017), family members who are physicians may increase perceptions of calling. Fourth, as exposure to positive examples from others can connect positive moral emotions tied to work (Vianello, Galliani, and Haidt 2010), exposure to “good” attendings while in medical school could increase perceptions of calling. Finally, while being mistreated by faculty is highly common and is tied to increased levels of burnout (Cook et al. 2014), I hypothesize that this could inspire a sense of duty to be the better doctor.
I assess these relationships with calling with data from Project on the Good Physician (2011). This is longitudinal data of medical students nested within 24 medical schools across the US. I find that the relationship between religion and calling is somewhat mixed. Specifically, while religion/spirituality is important in the expected direction, increased congregational attendance is inversely related to perceptions of calling, differing from practicing physicians. Vocational identity, meaning in life, physicians in the family, and exposure to both good and bad physicians correlate with increased perceptions of calling as expected.