What Do Doctors Find Meaningful about Their Work?

Although medical practice has always been difficult andthe risk for burnout close at hand, most practitioners have found that the joys and satisfaction of their work have prevailed over the challenges, enabling them to sustain a lifelong commitment to service. Thirteen years ago, we began to conduct workshops to help practitioners reflect on their own experiences in practice and discover and ex-plicitly identify what it is about the practice of medicine that is meaningful to them. We believed that with a clear understanding of what nourished and sustained them, cli-nicians could attend more consciously and intentionally to enhancing that which was meaningful and attenuating that which was depleting. Over the ensuing years, the question of meaning in medical practice has acquired greater urgency (1). Rapid changes in the structure and process of health care hav