Job Satisfaction of Pediatric Infectious Disease Physicians

Objective: Job satisfaction is the degree of liking and satisfaction of employees. Job satisfaction, which is related to labor productivity and performance, increases the employee's commitment, motivation and adaptation to the workplace. Physicians can provide higher quality care when satisfied. Therefore, physician satisfaction is an important issue for both patients and health managers and physicians. It was aimed to investigate the levels of job satisfaction and the relationship between demographic characteristics, job characteristics and job satisfaction among pediatric infectious physicians in the present study. Material and Methods: Out of 82 pediatric infections physicians in Turkey, this cross-sectional study was conducted with 62 physicians who agreed to participate in this questionnaire between 15 March and 6 April 2015 (response rate: 75%). Minessota Satisfaction Questionnaire Short Form, a 5-point Likert-type scale consisting of 20 items and a questionnaire containing sociodemographic variables were used. SPSS 20.0 was used for data analysis. Results: Mean age of the 62 pediatric infectious disease physicians was 38.9 +/- 8.4 years, of whom 66.1% was females, 33.9% was males and 83.9% was married. Mean levels of participants were 71 +/- 10.3 for general, 44.2 +/- 7.2 for intrinsic and 25.8 +/- 5.7 for extrinsic job satisfaction. There was a significant difference between age and intrinsic job satisfaction (p= 0.03).The lowest intrinsic satisfaction was found in the 30-40 age group. Pediatric infection diseases physicians in university hospitals had a higher general job satisfaction (p= 0.02). Conclusion: Pediatric infectious physicians had moderate job satisfaction and age and hospital level seem to be among the factors affecting job satisfaction. However, job satisfaction is a dynamic situation affected by many factors, and renewed and further studies are needed to reveal new valuable information.