Evaluation of job satisfaction of practice staff and general practitioners: an exploratory study

Background Primary care teams' job satisfaction is an important issue in quality of care. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the job satisfaction of general practitioners (GPs) and non-physician staff and to explore the elements that may impact on overall job satisfaction for GPs and non-physician staff separately. Methods The study was based on data from the European Practice Assessment and used an observational design. Job satisfaction was measured with the 10-items Warr-Cook-Wall questionnaire with 7-point-Likert scales. Job satisfaction of GPs and non-physician staff was compared and impact on overall job satisfaction was analysed with stepwise linear regression analyses for both samples separately. Results The study population consisted of 2878 non-physician staff (mean age: 38 years) and 676 GPs (mean age: 50 years). The actual mean working time per week of GPs was 50.0 hours and of practice staff 26.0 hours. Both were satisfied with colleagues and fellow workers (mean = 5.99 and mean = 6.18 respectively) and mostly dissatisfied with their income (mean = 4.40 and mean = 4.79 respectively). For GPs the opportunity to use their abilities (β = 0.638) and for non-physician staff recognition for their work (β = 0.691) showed the highest scores of explained variance (R2 = 0.406 and R2 = 0.477 respectively) regarding overall job satisfaction. Conclusions Non-physician staff evaluate their job satisfaction higher than GPs except recognition for work. Job satisfaction of members of primary care teams is important because poor satisfaction is associated with suboptimal healthcare delivery, poor clinical outcomes and higher turnover of staff.