BMJ Open (Aug 2024)

What has the appraisal for hospitals brought to job satisfaction of healthcare professionals? A cross-sectional survey in China

  • Guohong Li,
  • Mengjie Lu,
  • Yuyin Xiao,
  • Xiyang Li,
  • Chenshu Shi,
  • Keyu Song,
  • Dongsheng Bian,
  • Shuqiang Xu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-079285
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 8

Abstract

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Objective The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of hospital appraisals, specifically the Performance Appraisal for Tertiary Public Hospitals (PATPH), and to examine its impact on the job satisfaction of healthcare professionals in tertiary public hospitals in China.Design A cross-sectional study using a multistage sampling method. Improvements induced by PATPH in the working environment, job satisfaction and other covariates were measured. A series of weighted linear regressions with weights from the inverse probability-of-treatment weighting method were used to examine the effect of PATPH on job satisfaction.Setting Nine tertiary public hospitals across three economic and geographic regions in China.Participants In August 2020, a total of 13 211 hospital employees were surveyed, and 8417 doctors and nurses fully completed questionnaires forming the primary dataset for analysis. Of these respondents, males comprised 18.64% and doctors constituted 28.15%.Results This study revealed that PATPH had a positive impact on the job satisfaction of healthcare professionals. A ‘more effective’ PATPH working environment resulted in an improvement of 9.57 points (95% CI 8.99 to 10.16) in job satisfaction scores, controlling for all other variables. The finding persisted consistently through a series of sensitivity analyses.Conclusion The findings offered insights and inspiration for improving the job satisfaction of healthcare professionals, especially in the development of macrolevel policies targeted towards organisational enhancement.