Measuring the job satisfaction of physicians in organized settings.

The accurate measurement of physician job satisfaction in organized practice settings is important for both policy and administrative purposes. Previous efforts to measure physician job satisfaction have been unsatisfactory because of either conceptual or methodologic weaknesses. New measures of physician job satisfaction were developed and field tested on a population of physicians working in highly bureaucratic settings--prison health programs across the United States. Analysis of the measures demonstrated their reliability, validity, and ability to predict physicians' intentions to leave the job. The measures can serve to identify elements of the work setting that need to be changed to improve physician job satisfaction.