Physician Career Satisfaction Across Specialties

Details

• Personal Author:
  Kravitz RL ; Leigh JP ; Mobley S ; Samuels SJ ; Schembri M
• Description:
  BACKGROUND: The career satisfaction and dissatisfaction physicians experience likely influence the quality of medical care. OBJECTIVE: To compare career satisfaction across specialties among US physicians. METHODS: We analyzed data from the Community Tracking Study of 12 474 physicians (response rate, 65%) for the late 1990s. Data are cross-sectional. Two satisfaction variables were created: very satisfied and dissatisfied. Thirty-three specialty categories were analyzed. RESULTS: After adjusting for control variables, the following specialties are significantly more likely than family medicine to be very satisfying: geriatric internal medicine (odds ratio [OR], 2.04); neonatal-perinatal medicine (OR, 1.89); dermatology (OR, 1.48); and pediatrics (OR, 1.36). The following are significantly more likely than family medicine to be dissatisfying: otolaryngology (OR, 1.78); obstetrics-gynecology (OR, 1.61); ophthalmology (OR, 1.51); orthopedics (OR, 1.36); and internal medicine (OR, 1.22). Among the control variables, we also found nonlinear relations between age and satisfaction; high satisfaction among physicians in the west north Central and New England states and high dissatisfaction in the south Atlantic, west south Central, Mountain, and Pacific states; positive associations between income and satisfaction; and no differences between women and men. CONCLUSIONS: Career satisfaction and dissatisfaction vary across specialty as well as age, income, and region. These variations are likely to be of interest to residency directors, managed care administrators, students selecting a specialty, and physicians in the groups with high satisfaction and dissatisfaction. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Age Factors Delivery Of Health Care Demography Health Care Facilities Workforce And Services Health Personnel Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Age-factors Demographic-characteristics Health-care-facilities Health-care-personnel Health-services Injuries Medical-care Medical-personnel Occupational-health
• ISSN:
  0003-9926
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  California ; OSHA Region 9
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  162
• Issue:
  14
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20029549
• Citation:
  Arch Intern Med 2002 Jul; 162(14):1577-1584
• Contact Point Address:
  J. Paul Leigh, PhD, Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care, PSSB Suite 2500, UCD Medical Center, Sacramento, CA 95817
• Email:
  jpleigh@epm.ucdavis.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2002
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  Archives of Internal Medicine
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:3f477cdfb10d8304e935e60fb33d92422bd45207168869bdec29a331513fb9c3e5dab0a13caf60bfb6d35ab4dde8fb6614802f609667f6f3cffa7017f6f978d0
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/190504/cdc_190504_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 117.06 KB ]