Factors Affecting Korean Physician Job Satisfaction

This study examines job satisfaction of physicians in Korea and investigates factors affecting their satisfaction. The majority of the past studies tend to cover few minor factors- including stress and occupation professionality or insufficient scale of respondents in particular regions-thus leading to restricted explanations on job satisfaction of the overall physician pool in Korea. This study examines the level of job satisfaction of physicians in Korea and factors affecting their satisfaction by using the '2016 Korean Physician Survey (KPS)' data which included all physicians in Korea. Ordinal logistic regression analysis was conducted in this study in order to identify the factors affecting job satisfaction of physicians in terms of care environment attributes. These attributes included autonomy for care delivery, colleagues/staff/patient relations, income, healthcare resources, social reputation, personal leisure time, administration, restrictions and regulations, and work hours and loads. For the ordinal logistic regression analysis, general socio-demographic attributes, such as gender, age, specialty, job position, type of affiliated healthcare organization, working region, and length of service were controlled beforehand. The result of our measures, the affecting factors of job satisfaction for physicians, include being able to; maintain positive relations with patients through adequate time for consultation and necessary healthcare, have the autonomy to make clinical decisions, have healthy relations with peers and staff, obtain respect from family and society, work in an environment with desirable income and have adequate health resources, and have appropriate work hours and loads for those who facilitate high-quality care. Creating an environment in which physicians can focus on patient-oriented healthcare will contribute to promoting national healthcare.

Turnover Intention and Its Related Factors of Employed Doctors in Korea

Employment turnover among doctors at healthcare facilities negatively influences healthcare provision, facility management, and staffing. To support institutional and policy change, turnover intentions and its related factors of employed doctors were evaluated with 2016 Korean Physician Survey (n = 2719) in Korea. About 30.5% intended a turnover within two years. The significant related factors by multivariate analysis via binary logistic regression were gender, age, specialty, type of facility, length of current employment, usual number of hours worked per week, and income satisfaction. The odds of reporting turnover intention are 46.2% greater for males than females and 55.5% greater for aged 30-39 than aged 40-49. The odds are 28.9% smaller for support medicine than internal medicine. The odds are 224.2% greater for those employed at tertiary hospitals than those employed at clinics, but the odds are 34.0% smaller for convalescent hospital employment than general hospital employment. The number of years of current employment and income satisfaction each negatively, and the number of hours worked per week positively, related to turnover intentions. Fair compensation and performance evaluation systems and reasonable working hours should be guaranteed at healthcare facilities to reduce turnover, and institutional and policy measures should be implemented to improve workplace environmental quality.