Research ArticleResearch

Predictors of job satisfaction among academic family medicine faculty

Findings from a faculty work-life and leadership survey

Paul Krueger, David White, Christopher Meaney, Jeffrey Kwong, Viola Antao and Florence Kim
Canadian Family Physician March 2017; 63 (3) e177-e185;

Abstract

Objective To identify predictors of job satisfaction among academic family medicine faculty members.

Design A comprehensive Web-based survey of all faculty members in an academic department of family medicine. Bivariate and multivariable analyses (logistic regression) were used to identify variables associated with job satisfaction.

Setting The Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto in Ontario and its 15 affiliated community teaching hospitals and community-based teaching practices.

Participants All 1029 faculty members in the Department of Family and Community Medicine were invited to complete the survey.

Main outcome measures Faculty members’ demographic and practice information; teaching, clinical, administration, and research activities; leadership roles; training needs and preferences; mentorship experiences; health status; stress levels; burnout levels; and job satisfaction. Faculty members’ perceptions about supports provided, recognition, communication, retention, workload, teamwork, respect, resource distribution, remuneration, and infrastructure support. Faculty members’ job satisfaction, which was the main outcome variable, was obtained from the question, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your job?”

Results Of the 1029 faculty members, 687 (66.8%) responded to the survey. Bivariate analyses revealed 26 predictors as being statistically significantly associated with job satisfaction, including faculty members’ ratings of their local department and main practice setting, their ratings of leadership and mentorship experiences, health status variables, and demographic variables. The multivariable analyses identified the following 5 predictors of job satisfaction: the Maslach Burnout Inventory subscales of emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment; being born in Canada; the overall quality of mentorship that was received being rated as very good or excellent; and teamwork being rated as very good or excellent.

Conclusion The findings from this study show that job satisfaction among academic family medicine faculty members is a multi-dimensional construct. Future improvement in overall level of job satisfaction will therefore require multiple strategies.

Academic family medicine faculty members are involved in a range of activities, including teaching those at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, providing clinical care, mentoring (faculty, staff, and students), and participating in research and quality improvement activities and various administrative roles. Understanding how these faculty members perceive their roles and environment is crucial in order to attract, retain, and nurture them for future leadership roles and continued excellence. Although little has been published regarding predictors of job satisfaction among academic family medicine faculty members, previous studies have indicated that factors such as stress, burnout, and perceptions about the workplace are associated with job satisfaction and job turnover among physicians and academic physicians in general.1–10 Other studies have identified an association between mentorship received and job satisfaction among family physicians.11,12

Furthermore, a review of the literature on physician job satisfaction (not specifically academic family medicine faculty members) found that physician job dissatisfaction was associated with reduced patient quality of care and patient dissatisfaction with care received.6 Extrapolating on this, it is reasonable to infer that job dissatisfaction among academic family medicine faculty members negatively affects the quality of their performance in other activities (teaching, mentoring, research, etc). Given the diverse roles of academic family medicine faculty members, it is very important to understand their opinions about their work life. In 2011, the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) at the University of Toronto in Ontario conducted a survey to collect information on faculty members’ work life and their opinions about issues related to leadership, professional development, mentorship, and job satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to identify variables associated with job satisfaction among academic family medicine faculty members.

METHODS

Setting

The DFCM at the University of Toronto is the largest department of family medicine in North America. At the time of the survey there were 1029 faculty members (no tenure track or tenured faculty), 248 postgraduate trainees, 226 clinical clerks, 26 faculty members with protected research time funded by the DFCM, and more than 20 family medicine teaching units. Clinical teaching and research also took place in dozens of community-based practices and clinics.

Questionnaire development

We developed the survey questions by reviewing the literature, incorporating findings from an earlier qualitative leadership study conducted at the DFCM, reviewing questions from the DFCM Leadership Task Force, and considering the types of data needed to answer various primary and secondary research questions (ie, the data needed conduct meaningful multivariable analyses). We met frequently to refine questions and consider issues of reliability, validity, and readability, as well as the potential for being offensive, leading, or biased. Validated measures were included wherever possible (eg, self-rated health status, stress, Maslach Burnout Inventory [MBI]). We pretested the questionnaire with content experts, methodologists, and potential respondents. The questionnaire was revised and formatted as an online Web-based survey and received minor revisions after pilot-testing with 12 potential respondents.

The final questionnaire collected information on the following: demographic characteristics; practice settings; teaching, clinical, administration, and research activities; past and present leadership roles; training needs and preferences; mentorship opportunities (received and given); job satisfaction; health status; stress; and burnout. It also collected information about perceptions of supports provided, recognition, communication, retention, workload, teamwork, respect, resource distribution, remuneration, and infrastructure support. The response categories for these latter questions were 5-point Likert scales (eg, not at all important to very important). The questionnaire can be obtained by contacting the corresponding author.

Survey promotion

To improve participation, we implemented activities to help promote and legitimize the survey. Before launching, we made presentations at the DFCM executive meetings to inform and garner support from all family medicine chiefs and division directors. In addition, we hung posters at all sites, made announcements on the DFCM website, sent e-mail communications via the DFCM list server to all faculty members, and advertised the survey in the DFCM newsletter and news digest. After launching, we sent a revised poster to all sites and sent new announcements via the list server, website, and news digest. As an incentive, faculty members had a chance to win 1 of 4 prizes (2 tablet computers and 2 $100 gift certificates).

Survey implementation

We used a modified Dillman approach.13 On launch day, a personalized e-mail request was sent to each faculty member on behalf of the DFCM Chair that contained a link to the survey. Two days later, we sent a personalized request from the DFCM Chair to each of the family medicine chiefs and division directors to e-mail their respective faculty members to complete the survey. Five days later, we sent a personalized e-mail to all faculty members thanking those who had completed the survey and reminding those who had not, to do so as soon as possible. Subsequently, we sent 3 personalized e-mail reminders to the declining number of nonrespondents at weekly intervals.

Analysis

Before the analysis, we reached consensus on the most appropriate way to recode the categorical response data. Questions that used 5-point Likert scales were collapsed into 2 meaningful categories. For example, we collected information about several distinct constructs, such as perceptions of workload, retention, teamwork, respect, and support. Each construct contained several questions that were rated using a 5-point Likert scale (response options were from poor to excellent). Questions within each of these constructs were conceptually highly correlated and when tested were found to have high internal consistency. Therefore, within each construct we dichotomized the mean (from all questions) into ratings of less than 4 (1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = good) and 4 or more (4 = very good, 5 = excellent) to come up with an overall rating for each construct (eg, a dichotomous rating for the construct “teamwork” that represented either very good and excellent or poor, fair, and good). The outcome variable, job satisfaction, was obtained from the question, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your job?” We dichotomized job satisfaction into those who indicated they were very satisfied and other responses.

Before analysis, we selected the variables to include as potential predictors of job satisfaction. We used bivariate analyses (t test and Embedded Image2 test, as appropriate) to identify which variables were statistically significantly associated with job satisfaction. Descriptive statistics (numbers and percentages or means and standard deviations) were calculated for each potential predictor, along with P values, odds ratios (ORs), and their 95% CIs.

We included the statistically significant variables from the bivariate analyses in an iterative stepwise logistic regression analysis approach to identify a parsimonious set of predictors of job satisfaction. Adjusted ORs and corresponding 95% CIs are reported. We assessed the goodness of fit or usefulness of the final logistic regression model using a number of statistical techniques including the ρ2 statistic.14 Ethics approval was obtained from the University of Toronto.

RESULTS

Participant characteristics

Of the 1029 academic family medicine faculty members, 687 (66.8%) responded. The demographic characteristics of the sample were as follows: a mean age of 47 years (range 29 to 82 years); 52% were women; 87% were married or living with a partner; 72% were white; and 76% were born in Canada. Forty percent of participants reported working at their current site for 5 years or less, 30% for 6 to 15 years, and 30% for 16 or more years. Overall, faculty members reported working on average 46 hours per week, with 88% having on-call duties.

Bivariate analysis

Of the 687 respondents, 623 (90.7%) responded to the job satisfaction question, with 89.7% of faculty members reporting that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their job (38.8% and 50.9% reported being satisfied and very satisfied, respectively). Table 1 reports the statistically significant findings from the bivariate analyses. Of the 26 statistically significant predictors of job satisfaction, 11 were faculty members’ ratings of their local department, 1 was related to faculty members’ main practice, 3 were leadership and mentorship experience variables, 6 were health status variables, and 5 were demographic variables.

View this table:
Table 1.

Potential predictors of job satisfaction among family medicine faculty members: Of the 623 participants, 317 reported that they were very satisfied with their job, while 306 provided another response.

Multivariable analysis

We excluded highly correlated variables from the modeling process (eg, both stress and burnout were not included). The final adjusted logistic regression model (Table 2) contained 5 predictors of job satisfaction: having higher levels of emotional exhaustion (OR = 0.90, 95% CI 0.88 to 0.92) based on the MBI emotional exhaustion subscale (a continuous variable in which higher scores indicate higher emotional exhaustion, resulting in lower job satisfaction); having a higher personal accomplishment score (OR = 0.87, 95% CI 0.83 to 0.91) based on the MBI personal accomplishment subscale (a continuous variable in which higher scores indicate less personal accomplishment resulting in lower job satisfaction); being born in Canada (OR = 2.22, 95% CI 1.33 to 3.69); rating the overall quality of mentorship received as very good or excellent (OR = 3.32, 95% CI 1.51 to 7.31); and rating local teamwork as very good or excellent (OR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.19 to 2.90).

View this table:
Table 2.

Final multivariate logistic regression model of predictors of job satisfaction among family medicine faculty: Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test = 0.792; ρ2 = 0.13 (pseudo R2 values between 0.2 and 0.4 suggest a very good fit); Cox Snell R2 = 0.333; Nagelkerke R2 = 0.444; N = 525 (of the 623 participants, 98 (15.7%) had missing values for 1 or more of the variables included in the final model.

DISCUSSION

The bivariate findings demonstrate the range of variables that were statistically significantly associated with job satisfaction. The logistic regression analysis identified 5 independent predictors of job satisfaction: the MBI emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment subscales; place of birth; overall quality of mentorship received; and rating of teamwork. The MBI consists of 3 subscales, 2 of which were retained in the final logistic regression model. The emotional exhaustion subscale reflects the stress dimension of burnout,9 indicating that academic family medicine faculty members who experienced increased levels of emotional exhaustion through their work were less likely to be satisfied with their jobs. This finding is consistent with the general job satisfaction literature. We also found a second MBI subscale, personal accomplishment, or the feeling of effectiveness in achievement within one’s job, to be an important predictor of job satisfaction, which is in keeping with what might reasonably be expected.

We found that faculty members who were born in Canada were more than twice as likely to be satisfied with their jobs compared with faculty members who were not. A 2007 study from the United States (not specifically related to academic family medicine faculty) reported that foreign-born academics had lower work satisfaction than faculty members born in the United States.15 A qualitative study among physician faculty in the United States similarly found that foreign-born faculty members had lower professional satisfaction and suggested that this might be related to barriers such as lack of mentorship.16 Additional research (eg, focus groups and interviews) is required to better understand the possible reasons for this finding.

We found that faculty members who rated the overall quality of mentoring that they received as being very good or excellent were more than 3 times more likely to be satisfied with their jobs than those who rated the quality of their mentoring experiences as being lower. This finding appears consistent with the literature that suggests that mentorship is associated with job satisfaction.11,12 A 2014 study also found a statistically significant association between several aspects of mentoring and career satisfaction among junior academic faculty.17

Finally, we found that faculty members who rated teamwork between physicians and staff (eg, nursing, allied health, and administrative support) and among other physicians as being very good or excellent were nearly twice as likely to be satisfied with their jobs as those who rated teamwork lower. Little has been published about the relationship between teamwork and job satisfaction in academic family medicine faculty, possibly because interdisciplinary primary care teams are relatively new. However, the nursing and health services literature suggests that higher levels of teamwork are associated with greater job satisfaction.18–22 A meta-analysis of studies of nurses’ job satisfaction identified nurse-physician collaboration as strongly correlated with job satisfaction.23

Strengths and limitations

The strengths of this research include the comprehensive questionnaire based on findings from previous research and rigorous pretesting and pilot-testing. We conducted the survey in the largest department of family medicine in North America and obtained a good participation rate that resulted in a large sample size. A limitation of this research was that it was conducted in a single academic department of family medicine. However, as the issues are common to academic medicine in many settings, the findings might be generalizable, particularly for large, multisite departments. In addition, the findings appear to agree with the published literature and might be of relevance and value for others studying job satisfaction in similar populations.

Conclusion

Our multivariable model showed that job satisfaction is a multi-dimensional construct that includes health status variables, a demographic variable, and faculty perceptions of their work-life experience (quality of mentorship received) and their environment (teamwork). Although overall job satisfaction was high in this population, efforts to further improve job satisfaction among academic family medicine faculty members will need to address multiple constructs.

Notes

EDITOR’S KEY POINTS

  • In 2011, the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto in Ontario conducted a survey to collect information on faculty members’ work life and their opinions about issues related to leadership, professional development, mentorship, and job satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to identify variables associated with job satisfaction among the faculty members.

  • In this study, 89.7% of faculty members reported that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their job. This study’s multivariable model shows that job satisfaction is a multi-dimensional construct that includes health status variables (levels of emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment), a demographic variable (born in Canada), and faculty members’ perceptions of their work-life experience (quality of mentorship received) and their environment (teamwork).

POINTS DE REPÈRE DU RÉDACTEUR

  • En 2011, le département de médecine familiale et communautaire de l’Université de Toronto, en Ontario, a mené une enquête pour connaître l’opinion des professeurs sur leur vie professionnelle et sur leurs opinions concernant des questions liées au leadership, au développement professionnel, au mentorat et à la satisfaction au travail. Cette étude avait pour but de définir des variables associées à la satisfaction professionnelle chez les professeurs.

  • Dans cette étude, 89,7 % des professeurs ont déclaré être satisfaits ou très satisfaits de leur travail. Le modèle multivarié de cette étude montre que la satisfaction au travail est le résultat de plusieurs facteurs, y compris des variables liées à la santé (les niveaux d’épuisement et de réussite professionnelle), une variable démographique (être né au Canada) et l’opinion qu’ont les professeurs de leur expérience professionnelle (la qualité du mentorat reçu) et de leur milieu (le travail d’équipe).

Footnotes

  • This article has been peer reviewed.

  • Cet article a fait l’objet d’une révision par des pairs.

  • Contributors

    All authors contributed to the concept and design of the study; data analysis and interpretation; and preparing the manuscript for submission.

  • Competing interests

    None declared

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Predictors of job satisfaction among academic family medicine faculty
Paul Krueger, David White, Christopher Meaney, Jeffrey Kwong, Viola Antao, Florence Kim
Canadian Family Physician Mar 2017, 63 (3) e177-e185;
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