Research on the Factors Influencing Professional Satisfaction of Professors in Medical Colleges

Park, Yoon Hyung; Yoon, Hyun Byung

Abstract

PURPOSE
This study aims to examine the relevance between medical college professors' working environment and their job satisfaction. METHODS: A survey was done on the job satisfaction of medical college professors in service as of March 31, 2004 with 456 responding. Correlation analysis and regression analysis was conducted to find out the relevance of the working environment and job satisfaction. RESULTS: A relatively high satisfaction level was seen: satisfaction 55.1% and dissatisfaction 11.8%. This implies that professors have professional pride in their jobs. Concerning the work environment, they were highly dissatisfied in the research support categories, such as human resources or financial support, indicating a poor research environment. In terms of work hour ratio for medical college professors, medical practice was the largest, 49.8%, and the rest included research activities (18.0%) and educational activities (15.6%). In addition, they were the least satisfied with research activities. CONCLUSION: Medical college professors spend a great deal of time in medical practice because of their professional identity as medical doctors, compared to professors in other academic majors. Of course, although there are apparent differences between professors of basic medical science and those of clinical medicine, they can hardly put their time on research activities under the circumstances. Therefore, further study is necessary according to the future changes by considering the characteristics of medical college professors' educational and medical environment.