Quality of work-life among young medical doctors in Poland

Objectives. Human resource management is the most important function in the management of organizations and significantly affects the quality of work-life (QWL). Recently, the health sector started to be interested in the QWL among doctors. The study aim was to assess the QWL among Polish medical residents. Methods. The questionnaire for the medical residents was prepared using data acquired from a review of the international literature. In October 2017, the questionnaires were completed twice by 10 residents with a 2-week interval to assess the inter-rater reliability. The online questionnaire was distributed between April and May 2018. Results. A total of 243 doctors responded, over one-third of whom were men. The QWL was very high for 2.06% of the participants, high for 23.87%, moderate for 27.16%, low for 38.27% and very low for 8.64%. Among the factors that significantly relate to the QWL are the number of working hours per week (p = 0.007) and the general quality of life (p = 0.000). Conclusion. Low QWL is the result of inadequate management in Polish hospitals and residents' QWL still needs to be improved. We propose to conduct such a survey periodically among all young medical doctors to systematically improve their QWL.