Satisfactions and dissatisfactions of graduating family practice residents

This study was conducted to determine whether the types of professional satisfactions and dissatisfactions experienced by family practice residents in one program were characteristic of those experienced by residents from other programs.

Materials and procedures developed previously were used in a study of 23 residents from five family medicine programs. Respondents were interviewed in the spring of their graduation year. Transcripts of these interviews were examined for the presence of specific themes relating to professional satisfactions and dissatisfactions.

Themes found in the interviews from all five programs were similar to each other and to the themes uncovered previously. Satisfactions were related to the interpersonal aspects of patient care, the intellectual aspects of medicine, the process of delivering care, and instances of intervention in critical situations. An additional source of satisfaction, not found previously, was derived from activities in certain specific content areas of family medicine. Dissatisfactions reflected concerns about the bureaucratic climate in which medicine is currently practiced, time demands of a medical career, frustrations with patient behavior, and negative feelings about the professional situation of the family practice resident.

Having corroborated the existence of satisfaction and dissatisfaction themes found earlier, results of this research may provide information to educators about the professional identity of the family physicians they are training.