Quality of work-life among young medical doctors in Poland.

Abstract

Background: Human resource management is the most important function in the management of organisations and significantly affects the quality of work-life (QWL). Recently, the health sector started to be interested in QWL among doctors. The aim was to assess the QWL among Polish medical residents.Materials and methods: The questionnaire for the medical residents was prepared using data acquired from a review of the international literature. In October 2017, the questionnaires were completed twice by ten residents with a two-week interval to assess the inter-rater reliability. The online questionnaire was distributed between April and May 2018.Results: 243 doctors responded, over one-third of whom were men. QWL was very high for 2.06\xa0% of the participants, high for 23.87\xa0%, moderate for 27.16\xa0%, low for 38.27\xa0% and very low for 8.64\xa0%. Among the factors that significantly relate to the quality of work-life are the number of working hours per week (p = 0.007) and the general quality of life (QoL) (p = 0.000).Conclusion: Low QWL is the result of inadequate management in Polish hospitals and residents QWL still needs to be improved. We propose to conduct such a survey periodically among all young medical doctors to systematically improve QWL.