Cornerstones of Career Satisfaction in Medicine

Abstract

S ociety's increasing expectations and the transition from traditional to regional bureaucracies, combined with advances in medicine, pressure physicians into increasing their teaching and research commitments and into becoming more involved in administrative functions. In addition to their clinical duties, many physicians have taken on varying amounts of teaching, research, and administrative duties (1-4). Further, the practice of medicine has always intruded on physicians' personal lives, particularly in rural areas and where there are few specialists. Consequently, the organization of medical practice has shifted toward group practice and clinical decision making has evolved from highly independent consultations to the sharing of expertise (5,6).

Impact of payment methods on professional equity of physicians

“…Previous studies have described that FPs experience poor career satisfaction [17,18] . These results depict a lack of motivation among FPs who are fundamental in the provision of primary care.…”

“…Also, given that lower levels of satisfaction [17,18] and income disparities [19] have been described among family/general practitioners (FPs) in comparison with other specialists, it is pertinent to evaluate differences in the perceptions of professional equity among physicians, comparing FPs and other specialists paid by different payment schemes.…”

Latent gender inequalities in the well-being of physicians according to payment method for practicing medicine: a cross-sectional study

“…The measure of career satisfaction contained inherent and performance dimensions to capture satisfaction with higher-order needs, and personal and professional dimensions to capture satisfaction of lower-order needs [17] . The measure has four items for each of the four dimensions, all scored on six-point scales, from "very dissatisfied" to "very satisfied".…”

“…The measures of career satisfaction [17] , professional equity [18] and daily distress [23] were validated in a Canadian cross-national sample among different medical specialties.…”

“…Despite this transformation in payment systems, available evidence does not explain the impact of APP on the satisfaction of physicians, and the shift from FFS to APP can be considered a "philosophical change" which might modify clinical and personal priorities of practitioners [15] . Therefore, it is important to study the effects of APP, FFS, or blended payment systems on career satisfaction and professional equity, given that these two concepts are aspects of motivation [16] : career satisfaction is a longitudinal perception of outcomes evaluating both higher-and lower-order motivational needs [17] ; and professional equity is a short term process-oriented perception, evaluating the balance between contributions made and rewards received [18] . In addition, since stress affects satisfaction and rewards, levels of daily distress need to be concurrently measured when studying well-being of physicians and payment methods.…”