RESEARCH REPORT POSTER DISPLAY

PHYSIOTHERAPISTS’ JOB SATISFACTION IN ISHIKAWA PREFECTURE, JAPAN. Araki H¹, Ogiwara S²; ¹Department of Medical Rehabilitation Services, Kariya Toyota General Hospital, Kariya, Aichi, Japan. ²The University of Kanazawa, Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan

PURPOSE: Healthcare professionals are prone to burnout. One factor for this may be job dissatisfaction. The purpose of this study was four-fold: 1) to provide evidence to show whether or not clinicians in Ishikawa Prefecture were satisfied with the level of professional practice of physiotherapy; 2) to find out which factors caused satisfaction or dissatisfaction; 3) to determine if the statements presented in this study were considered relevant and appropriate as a measure for job satisfaction in clinical practice; and 4) to contrast the findings of this study with those of the Speakman et al’s. RELEVANCE: This study would help contribute to our knowledge of the positive and negative aspects in daily working conditions of physiotherapists. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 352 physiotherapists in Ishikawa Prefecture participated in a mailed survey. METHODS: A questionnaire using the Japanese version of the Speakman’s scale sought the clinicians’ responses to 10-item statements related to their job concerning paperwork, challenge, physical demand, professional autonomy, fulfillment, and stress. Specifically, the respondents were asked to rate their level of agreement or disagreement for each of the statements on the seven-point Likert-type scale. In order to examine the relevance of the 10-item statements in regards to physiotherapists the respondents were then asked to indicate how important they felt that the statement related to their job satisfaction on a seven-point scale of importance. ANALYSIS: Using the chi-square test, tests of independence were carried out between gender and professional experience and between gender and professional status. We also used the two-tailed Mann-Whitney U test to analyse the difference between gender and professional status. In addition, the Kruskal-Wallis test was employed to compare among the groups the influence of their length of professional experience, and this was accompanied with the use of the Steel-Dwass test as required. RESULTS: The final sample consisted of 183 (52.3%) questionnaires. The degree of agreement with the scale was moderate (range: 3.0-5.6), though the respondents considered themselves to be engaged in rewarding work. The causes of their job dissatisfaction were excessive paperwork and physical/mental stress. The degree of importance for the scale as a measure of job satisfaction was also moderate (mean score: 4.9), as opposed to that of their American colleagues who rated it high when Speakman et al. conducted their study in 1996. CONCLUSIONS: The respondents were able to find the positive aspects of their job despite feeling stressed and discontented. They also may have found the ‘hygienes’ factors such as salary and fringe benefits to be of more importance for their daily job satisfaction. The results should be interpreted in terms of culture and mores, differences in healthcare systems and the time period in which the studies were conducted. IMPLICATIONS: The findings provide us with possible clues as to the solving of work-related problems, such as ones that concern the recruitment and retention patterns of physiotherapists vis-á-vis job dissatisfaction in the workplace. KEYWORDS: Job satisfaction, Japanese version of the Speakman’s scale, Physiotherapist. FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This work was unfunded, and ethics approval was not required. CONTACT: EBreha@toyota-kai.or.jp