BACKGROUND: Doctors’ job satisfaction has an important effect on medical and health services. This study assessed the level of job satisfaction in Chinese doctors and explored how influencing factors differ between general practitioners and specialists.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) on job satisfaction was distributed to 1883 doctors in Jiangsu province, including 850 general practitioners and 1033 specialists. Data analysis was performed with SPSS 20.0. A one-way ANOVA was used to analyze doctors’ job satisfaction and logistic regression analysis was used for multivariate analysis. Correlation analysis was done on the 5 dimensions of satisfaction.

RESULTS: The average MSQ score of all surveyed doctors was 3.11±0.87, with general practitioners (GPs) and specialists scores of 2.81±0.84 and 3.35±0.82, respectively. Analysis of doctor satisfaction indicated that gender, age, marital status, educational attainment, professional title, and seniority were statistically significant (P<0.05). Overall satisfaction was most closely related to the job itself (r=0.96); work, work environment, and interpersonal relationship were closely related with lead management.

CONCLUSIONS: The level of job satisfaction of Chinese doctors, especially general practitioners, needs to be improved. Measures such as improving education levels, work environment, and relationships should to be taken soon to improve doctors’ job satisfaction in China.

Keywords: general practitioners, Job Satisfaction, specialization