Australian doctors' satisfaction with their work: results from the MABEL longitudinal survey of doctors.

OBJECTIVE

To compare the level and determinants of job satisfaction between four groups of Australian doctors: general practitioners, specialists, specialists-in-training, and hospital non-specialists.

DESIGN, PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: National cross-sectional questionnaire survey as part of the baseline cohort of a longitudinal survey of Australian doctors in clinical practice (Medicine in Australia - Balancing Employment and Life [MABEL]), undertaken between June and November 2008, including 5193 Australian doctors (2223 GPs, 2011 specialists, 351 hospital non-specialists, and 608 specialists-in-training).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Job satisfaction scores for each group of doctors; the association between job satisfaction and doctor, job and geographical characteristics.

RESULTS

85.7% of doctors were moderately or very satisfied with their jobs. There were no differences in job satisfaction between GPs, specialists and specialists-in-training. Hospital non-specialists were the least satisfied compared with GPs (odds ratio [OR], 0.56 [95% CI, 0.39-0.81]). For all doctors, factors associated with high job satisfaction were a good support network (OR, 1.72 [95% CI, 1.41-2.10]), patients not having unrealistic expectations (OR, 1.48 [95% CI, 1.25-1.75]), and having no difficulty in taking time off work (OR,1.48 [95% CI, 1.20-1.84]). These associations did not vary across doctor types. Compared with GPs, on-call work was associated with lower job satisfaction for specialists (OR, 0.48 [95% CI, 0.23-0.98]) and hospital non-specialists (OR, 0.25 [95% CI, 0.08-0.83]).

CONCLUSION

This is the first national survey of job satisfaction for doctors in Australia. It provides an important baseline to examine the impact of future health care reforms and other policy changes on the job satisfaction of doctors.