A study on job satisfaction of family physicians in Basrah

Background: Job satisfaction is a reflection of interaction of the physicians and all the components of the surrounding environments. A high level of satisfaction is desirable and may contribute to better workers performance. Objectives: To explore the degree of satisfaction of family physicians in Basrah with their jobs. Methods: A cross-sectional study targeting all family physicians who were working in Basrah at the time of the study (2018) was carried out. A total of 67 out of 74 physicians were successfully interviewed according to a special questionnaire form that was prepared in the light of selected readings and guided by the researchers view on areas of interest. The data collection phase lasted for four months (AprilAugust 2018). Results: A good proportion (43.3%) of family physicians in Basrah were posted in places other than family medicine practice. The majority were young, females, and reasonably lived close to their work sites. Family physicians were very satisfied with the supervisors (95.5%), colleagues (97.0%) and clients (86.6%). They were also satisfied with their competence in handling their daily tasks and fairly satisfied with their postgraduate training and in-services training. They were very unsatisfied with their income, their work conditions in terms of amenities and staffing, with respect to specialty under two thirds (61.2%) expressed their satisfaction with their status as family physicians but 38.8% were not satisfied and this was reflected on their desire to quit to other specialty (55.2%). A big problem is the perception that the specialty is not respected by the public (85.1%), not respected by other clinical specialties (95.5%), not supported by mass media (95.5%), and the specialty is not optimally utilized (79.1%). However, 67.2% reported that the specialty improved care delivery at primary health care centres. Conclusions: Mostly family physicians were happy with competence required to handle tasks. Except for the overall work environment, participants denied to have adequate amenities. Most positive points were related to humanities. Most of negative points were related to income, recognition and amenities. They expressed negative views on all aspects of salary valuation and most of them wanted to change specialty.