To be effective, physicians maintain they must be motivated and competent, and must show concern for the patient. An important component of motivation is the physicians' sense of specific competence, that is, they have an important and well-defined service to offer. Much of physicians' personal satisfaction in their work depends upon this sense of competence. Furthermore, physicians on the whole do not regard themselves as research scientists, but rather as applied scientists, and they do not clearly experience a dichotomy between the scientific and the humanistic or affective aspects of medicine. Their satisfactions are not theoretical but pragmatic.
Physicians take much satisfaction in their professional position as a mark of achievement.
This sense of achievement is more important for physicians than monetary rewards, which they do not like to think of as a primary motivation. Moreover, while physicians gain some satisfaction from scientific interest in their work, they gain more from the therapeutic results. An important element of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is found in the sense of consistency between personal and professional ethics. Thus, physicians do seem to have a common sense of ethical purpose. On the whole, physicians continue to exhibit the dualistic balance between the scientific and the humanistic.