Good Work Conditions Promote Clinician Job Satisfaction, Reduce Burnout

Well-functioning workplaces that promote trust, communication and quality over productivity minimize physicians’ burnout and their desire to leave medical practice, according to a recent AHRQ-funded study in Health Affairs. Concerns about job satisfaction among physicians have increased in recent years following changes to reimbursement rules, pressures to adopt electronic records and demands for high productivity. To understand more, researchers examined data from 168 clinicians in 34 clinics. At baseline, 74 percent of respondents indicated that they were satisfied with their jobs (scoring 3.5 or higher on 5-point satisfaction scale). One year later, researchers found that clinicians whose satisfaction had increased were more likely to report better scores on measures of burnout and less likely to want to leave practice. The findings confirmed that clinician satisfaction is related to work conditions that can be modified and is an important metric for clinical practices to measure, researchers concluded. Access the abstract.

Joy In Medical Practice: Clinician Satisfaction In The Healthy Work Place Trial

Mark Linzer1,*,
Christine A. Sinsky2,
Sara Poplau3,
Roger Brown4,
Eric Williams5,
the Healthy Work Place Investigators6

+Author Affiliations

¹Mark Linzer (mark.linzer@hcmed.org) is director of the Division of General Internal Medicine, Hennepin County Medical Center, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
²Christine A. Sinsky is a physician in general internal medicine at Medical Associates Clinic and Health Plans, in Dubuque, Iowa, and a vice president at the American Medical Association.
³Sara Poplau is assistant director of the Office of Professional Worklife, Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation, in Minneapolis.
⁴Roger Brown is a professor of research methodology and medical statistics in the School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
⁵Eric Williams is director of the Assurance of Learning Program and a professor in the Culverhouse College of Commerce, University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa.
⁶The Healthy Work Place (HWP) Investigators are recognized in the acknowledgments at the end of the article.

↵*Corresponding author

Abstract

To better understand how clinicians’ job satisfaction relates to work conditions and outcomes for clinicians and patients, we examined data from the Healthy Work Place trial. Data were collected from physicians and advanced practice providers at baseline and approximately one year later. At baseline, 74 percent of respondents indicated job satisfaction. Satisfaction was associated with less chaos, more cohesion, better communication, and closer values alignment at work, but not with higher-quality care or fewer medical errors. At follow-up, the respondents with satisfaction data then and at baseline who indicated increased satisfaction (16 percent of these respondents) were almost three times more likely to report improved burnout scores and over eight times as likely to indicate reduced intention to leave their practices, compared to the clinicians whose satisfaction did not increase. These findings confirm that clinicians’ job satisfaction is related to remediable work conditions and suggest that it may be an important metric for clinical practices and practice organizations.

October 2017

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