HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS, SATISFACTION IN THE URBAN FAMILY PHYSICIAN PROGRAM OF IRAN

Health care providers assist the family physicians in providing health services.
Satisfaction of health care providers will play a significant role in sustaining and providing more
comprehensive and qualitative services. This study was conducted to determine the level of satisfaction
of health care providers in Fars and Mazandaran provinces from the urban family physician program.
Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out in winter 2016. 15% of health care
providers in Fars and Mazandaran provinces were randomly selected and studied. The data collection
tool was a researcher-made questionnaire including personal variables with 16 open and closed
questions; satisfaction from the family physician program was analyzed by 13 closed questions in Likert
scale; the validity and reliability of questionnaire were confirmed.
Results: Among 228 health care workers, 133 cases (58.3%) were employed in Fars province and 219
cases (96.1%) were female. The average satisfaction level of the urban family physicians was 3.90 ± 0.9
from 5 score and 3.22 ± 1.0 of population under coverage. Overall satisfaction of 54.8% of health care
providers was higher than the average (above 3.5 from the total 5 score). There was no significant
difference between the satisfaction of health care providers and the province of service place in any of
the variables (p <0.05). There was a significant relationship between the overall satisfaction of health
care providers and the willingness to survive (p = 0.000, r= 0/197).
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that satisfaction of health care providers with family
physicians' performance was higher than the average and moderate for the population under coverage.
It is suggested to design and implement interventional programs for different levels in order to improve
satisfaction.