General practitioner teachers’ job satisfaction and their medical students' wish to join the field – a correlational study

Damian Notker Meli,Angie Ng,Sarah Singer,Mireille Schaufelberger,Peter Frey

doi:10.1186/1471-2296-15-50

Abstract

BackgroundThere will be increasing competition for young physicians worldwide as more and more physicians retire. While enthusiasm towards GP work is important for GP teachers as role models, satisfaction within the profession has declined. This study aims to determine if medical students’ desire to become GPs is related to the job satisfaction of their teaching GPs and explore the factors tied to this job satisfaction.MethodsIn this cross-sectional, correlational study, teaching GPs of the University of Bern and the fourth year medical students completing internships with them filled in separate questionnaires.ResultsWhether or not the GP teacher is perceived by a student to be satisfied with her/his job is correlated to that student’s satisfaction with the internship, which in turn, is correlated with student’s wish to be a GP after the internship. Results show which factors are most related to GP job satisfaction and the effect of working hours and their composition.ConclusionsMedical students’ perception of their GP teachers’ job satisfaction positively affect their wish to become GPs, and their satisfaction with their internships adds to this. Enhancing the positive aspects of GP work, such as recognition, and improving negative ones, such as administrative duties, are necessary to attract medical students into the GP field.

Highlights

There will be increasing competition for young physicians worldwide as more and more physicians retire
Within the field of medicine, general practice has suffered from the primary care-specialty income gap [3] and relatively lower amount of associated prestige [4], and these problems need to be addressed in order to attract medical students
It has been found that most medical students are openminded towards working in General Practice [1], and it has been suggested that the job satisfaction of General Practitioners (GPs) affects the recruitment of new physicians into this field of medical practice [7]

Summary

Introduction

There will be increasing competition for young physicians worldwide as more and more physicians retire. Within the field of medicine, general practice has suffered from the primary care-specialty income gap [3] and relatively lower amount of associated prestige [4], and these problems need to be addressed in order to attract medical students. It has been found that most medical students are openminded towards working in General Practice [1], and it has been suggested that the job satisfaction of GPs affects the recruitment of new physicians into this field of medical practice [7]. In countries in which GP practices exist as independent businesses, the ability to work within an organisational setting rather than in their own practice positively influences students’ in the decision to become GPs [1]. The existence of a professorship in General Practice [1], the improvement of family compatability and work-life balance for GPs [2,5]; and addressing concerns about its broad intellectual content’s being impossible to master [4,5] can motivate students to become

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