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