Job satisfaction of general practitioners: an international comparison
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose \nJob satisfaction of general practitioners (GPs) is an important issue, because of widespread dissatisfaction in several countries. GPs often feel overburdened by administrative detail that keeps them from direct patientrelated work. Workload of GPs is increasing as a result of demographic and epidemiological changes. The complexity of healthcare systems and managerial pressure may have affected job satisfaction as well. The aim of this study is to analyse job satisfaction in an international comparative framework. \nTheory \nA general theory of how people ‘produce’ their own wellbeing is described and applied to the job satisfaction of GPs. It is expected that job satisfaction is influenced by the stimulation that GPs experience from the variety and challenges of their tasks, from comfortable working \nconditions, such as hours and pay, from their social status, and from behavioural confirmation from colleagues and patients. Based on these general insights more specific hypotheses are developed. \nMethods \nData from the QUALICOPC study is used, conducted among approximately 7,000 GPs in 34 (mainly European) countries. Job satisfaction was measured in the GP survey through six items (combined into a scale) about job experience. Independent variables are taken from the GP survey and from existing data on country and healthcare system level. Data were analysed using linear multilevel regression analysis, with countries and GPs as levels. \nResults \nGPs vary in job satisfaction with the lowest levels in Spain, Hungary, Slovakia, Estonia and Lithuania and the highest levels in Sweden, Norway, Canada, Cyprus and Denmark. Findings show that around 33% of the total variance is situated on the country level and that in countries with a higher GDP per capita, GPs are more satisfied. At the GP- and practice level, practicing technical procedures and preventive care, vacation, feedback from colleagues, patient satisfaction, and age are positively related to GP job satisfaction and working hours is negatively related to GP job satisfaction. \nDiscussion \nDespite the finding that a substantial portion of the variation in GP job satisfaction is accounted for by country level characteristics, this study has not been able to identify relevant country level characteristics, other than GDP per capita, that explain the variation in GP job satisfaction between countries. Therefore, based on the \nGP- and practice level results, recommendations on how to organise GP-friendly primary care practices are formulated regarding nurse substitution of GP tasks, the work-life balance and peer feedback.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".