Satisfaction of physicians working in hospitals within the European Union: State of the evidence based on systematic review

Abstract

Background Despite the wide range of studies concerning physician satisfaction in different European countries, there is a lack of literature reviews synthesizing and analyzing current evidence evaluating satisfaction of physicians working in European hospitals. The goal of our research was to provide a general overview of the studies in this area and their results. Methods We searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library from January 2000 to January 2017 including both MESH/Emtree terms and free text words related to the subject with no language restrictions. The eligibility criteria included: (i) target population: physicians working in European hospitals, (ii) quantitative research aimed at assessing physician satisfaction and (iii) validated tools. We performed a narrative synthesis and meta-analysis. Results A total of 8585 abstracts and 368 full text articles were independently screened by 2 reviewers against inclusion/exclusion criteria. Finally 61 studies were eligible for qualitative analysis. Included studies enrolled a total of 50 001 physicians from 17 countries. Sample sizes varied between 54 and 7090 participants (median: 336). According to our review ∼59% of physicians working in European hospitals are overall satisfied, 3.54 was the mean satisfaction among studies reporting data on a scale from 1 to 5, 4.81 for studies with a scale from 1 to 7, 6.12 among studies reporting data on a scale from 1 to 10, and 59.65 among studies with a scale from 0 to 100. Conclusions The level of physician satisfaction in Europe is moderate. There is a large variety of tools and scales used to assess it.