The Job Satisfaction of General Practitioners in China and Its Influencing Factors: a Systematic Review

Background General practitioners are the "gatekeepers" of residents' health, and their job satisfaction largely affects the quality and efficiency of primary healthcare service, which shows that it is of great significance to establish a job satisfaction evaluation system of general practitioners suitable for Chinese national conditions, and to improve the job satisfaction of general practitioners in order to promote the reform of the primary healthcare service system. Objective To conduct a systematic review of the job satisfaction of general practitioners and its influencing factors in China, to analyze the commonalities and differences in evaluation indexes and research results of the job satisfaction of general practitioners and their influencing factors in different studies, in order to provide reference for the establishment of a general practitioners' job satisfaction evaluation system suitable for Chinese national conditions. Methods PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, National Knowledge Infrastructure, WanFang Data and CQVIP were searched to obtain cross-sectional studies on job satisfaction and influencing factors of general practitioners from inception to June 12, 2023. Two researchers independently screened the literature and extracted the authors of the included literature, the time of the survey, the area of the survey, the sample size, the dimensions and indicators of the evaluation of job satisfaction, and the influencing factors of job satisfaction, and other information. The descriptive analysis method was adopted to summarize, analyze and compare. Results We included 19 Chinese studies, including 15 354 general practitioners. The evaluation of the job satisfaction of general practitioners mainly involved four dimensions: material satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, growth satisfaction, and overall satisfaction, of which 19 articles mentioned income and interpersonal relationship, 14 articles mentioned working environment, job promotion, and personal value, and 8 articles mentioned training. The influencing factors of job satisfaction of general practitioners included income level, gender, age, title, education, work pressure, workload, promotion opportunities, employment methods, work environment, length of service, interpersonal relationship, welfare benefits, type of unit, social recognition and so on. Conclusion The overall level of job satisfaction of general practitioners in China was not high, and was affected by income level, gender, age, title, educational, workload, work pressure, promotion opportunities, employment methods and other factors.