[Population satisfaction with health care and physicians' job satisfaction]

To assess whether development of health services in Norway has been well balanced in terms of satisfaction; time series variation has been compared for population satisfaction with health services and physician job satisfaction.

Data were retrieved from the following sources and years: the reference panel of The Research Institute of the Norwegian Medical Association on physician job satisfaction in the years 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2006; the municipal surveys of TNS Gallup on population satisfaction with health care (primary) in the years 1995 - 2000, 2003 and 2005 and in 1999, 2000 and 2003 for satisfaction with hospitals, and from the Norwegian part of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) on population willingness to allocate resources to public health care (in 1990 and 2006). Time series of physician satisfaction were computed from changes in satisfaction between consecutive surveys. Time series of population satisfaction were computed from annual regression-adjusted means that control for the association between satisfaction and observable personal characteristics.

On a scale from 10 to 70, hospital doctors' job satisfaction increased from 50.2 in 1994 to 52.3 in 2006. General practitioners' job satisfaction increased from 52.3 to 55.5 in the same period. From 1995 to 2005, consumer satisfaction with primary care increased from 4.43 to 4.54 and with hospital services from 4.23 to 4.47 (on a scale from 1 to 6). The proportion of the population who believes more public resources should be spent on health care increased from 82.7 % in 1990 to 85.2 % in 2006.

The development in the health care sector seems to be balanced in the sense that views of the population and health personnel have followed parallel trajectories. A large and increasing share of the population is willing to allocate more resources to health care.