Editor - I was heartened to read the article on medical marriages in last month's studentBMJ.¹ My fiancé and I are both medical and recognised many of the benefits and pitfalls listed in the article. Although it is helpful to understand the nature of each other's work and the implications of medicine as a career, the pressures of time and workload can often still prove troublesome. Marriage is more important than the career, but sadly this opinion is not often reflected in the workplace.

Inflexible and increasingly antisocial hours, in part due to the new European Working Time Directive, and fixed holidays as a student and junior doctor leave little room for quality time within the relationship. This is despite evidence that marriage is beneficial to psychological health and wellbeing and therefore beneficial in the workplace.²

Such an ethos has in part attracted both of us to general practice, which offers more opportunity to combine family life and a successful career, and I am sure that we are not alone in this opinion. If a career in hospital medicine is to remain attractive to students and junior doctors then there needs to be increasing flexibility and recognition of the importance of family life within the hospital environment.

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