Objective To delineate the specific practices that physicians use to promot
e their own well-being. Design, setting, and participants 304 members of a
primary care practice-based research group responded by mail to a survey on
physician well-being. From the original survey, 130 subjects responded to
an open-ended survey item regarding their own wellness-promotion practices.
Methods Qualitative content analysis was used to identify the common theme
s in the physicians' responses to the open-ended question. A validated 18-i
tem instrument, the Scales of Psychological Well-Being (SPWB), was used for
measurement. Main outcome measures Similarities and differences between th
e various wellness-promotion practices that respondents reported using and
associations between the use of these practices and SPWB scores. Results Th
e 5 primary wellness-promotion practices that evolved from thematic analysi
s of the survey responses included "relationships," "religion or spirituali
ty," "self-care," "work," and "approaches to life." The use of the last typ
e of practice was significantly associated with increased psychological wel
l-being (SPWB) scores compared with the use of any of the other wellness-pr
omotion practice categories (P<0.01), and there was a trend toward increase
d well-being among users of any category of wellness-promotion practices. C
omments by our respondents provide specific descriptions of how physicians
attend to their emotional, spiritual, and psychological well-being. Conclus
ion Physicians use a variety of approaches to promote their own well-being,
which son: themselves into 5 main categories and appear to correlate with
improved levels of psychological well-being among users.