Practice and career satisfaction among residency trained family physicians: a national survey.

This paper reports the results of a national survey of perceptions of practice and career satisfaction among the first cohorts of residency-trained family physicians. The findings indicate that a large majority of the respondents (n = 876), most of whom had been in practice for only three years or less at the time of the survey in 1979, were well satisfied with their careers and work in general as well as with their residency training, practice arrangements and facilities, colleague relationships, and hospital privileges. Several sources of relative dissatisfaction and difficulty were reported by the physicians, however, including practice time pressures, the necessity of treating emotional problems beyond their training, financial costs associated with operating their practice, paperwork, and perceived interference of external regulations and/or agencies in the physician-patient relationship.