The role of the psychiatrist as medical director: a survey of psychiatric administrators.

Previous surveys of public and community psychiatrists have demonstrated that medical directors perform a wider variety of tasks, and experience increased job satisfaction, compared to staff psychiatrists. Notwithstanding respondents' belief that clinical collaboration tasks contribute most to job satisfaction, the performance of administrative tasks is most highly correlated with overall job satisfaction. The current survey was undertaken to determine whether these findings could be replicated among hospital-based psychiatrists. Demographic and job characteristic profiles of hospital-based psychiatrists were clearly distinguished from those of community psychiatrists. Despite these differences, task profiles and job satisfaction parameters of hospital-based psychiatrists were comparable to those previously reported for community psychiatrists.