The professional self-evaluation of immigrant physicians from the former Soviet Union in Israel

This study tests the hypothesis that the personal construction of a positive professional identity is central to immigrant physicians' psychosocial well-being. Data are derived from responses to structured questionnaires from the first and third stages of a 5-year, three-stage cohort study of physicians who immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union in 1990. At the third stage of the study, in 1995, 387 physicians were working as physicians of a total of 519 respondents. Previous analyses of this research population showed that the immigrants who obtained work in their profession had significantly higher scores on a variety of indicators of psychosocial well-being than those who did not. In this paper, which narrows its focus to those who were working as physicians in 1995, significant positive relationships were found among three measures of self-evaluation, and between professional self-esteem, global self-esteem, and work satisfaction, and adaptation to life in Israel. General practitioners and specialists scored higher on professional self-evaluation than residents. Women scored higher than men, and older respondents (age's 36-45) scored higher than younger respondents (ages 25-35). The immigrant physicians viewed themselves as similar to their Israeli-trained colleagues in terms of their professional role behavior and were particularly positive about their diagnostic skills and the quality of their relationships with their patients. These findings are discussed in terms of role theory, which suggests that the work role of professionals is the most salient component of their self-identify.