Job Satisfaction Among Academic Family Physicians

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Physician Well-being
• Primary Care Research

Background:

• Family physicians face high burnout rates, with decreased work-life balance.
• Academic family medicine faculty report low career satisfaction and consider leaving academia.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore factors influencing job satisfaction and burnout in academic family medicine faculty.
• To identify key themes contributing to physician well-being and dissatisfaction.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study involving six academic family medicine clinics.
• Focus groups conducted to gather rich, dialogue-based data from physician participants.
• Grounded theory and constant comparison methods used for systematic data analysis.

Main Results:

• Time emerged as the dominant theme (62%), with subthemes including administrative tasks/emails (61%), teaching (17%), electronic medical records (EMR) (13%), and patient care (9%).
• Other significant themes were benefits (9%), resources (8%), undervalue (8%), physician well-being (7%), and practice demand (6%).

Conclusions:

• Academic family physicians identify time as a crucial factor for job satisfaction.
• There is a need for increased resources, such as additional staff, to manage growing work demands.
• Physicians generally enjoy the academic primary care setting but require support to mitigate time constraints and stressors.