PapersUK senior doctors' career destinations, job satisfaction, and future intentions: questionnaire surveyCommentary: Are contented doctors good doctors?

# UK senior doctors' career destinations, job satisfaction, and future intentions: questionnaire survey {#article-title-2} Doctors' career choices, destinations, and views about their jobs provide useful insights for workforce planning. We report a survey of all traceable graduates from UK medical schools in 1974. We mailed questionnaires in 1998, asking about employment history and current job. In all, 77% (1717/2217) replied (72% (1223) of men and 80% (494) of women). Of respondents, 97% (1673) were in medical employment in the United Kingdom or abroad, and 85% (1460) worked in the UK NHS. The table shows the distribution of their specialties. In NHS general practice, 98% (488) of men and 85% (183) of women were principals; of these, 39% (72) of women and 5% (25) of men worked part time. In NHS hospital practice, 97% (469/485) of men and 76% (114/150) of women whose main paid post was in the NHS (not in a university) were consultants; of these, 26% (30) of women and 11% (50) of men worked part time. View this table: Profile of 1673 respondents (graduates from 1974) in medical employment in 1998: specialty and job satisfaction. Values are numbers (percentages of all medical posts) unless stated otherwise We asked respondents to score five statements about job satisfaction, from “strongly agree” (score 1) to “strongly disagree” (5). The statements were “I find enjoyment in my current post”; “I am doing interesting and challenging work”; “I feel dissatisfied in my current post”; “most days I am enthusiastic about my work”; “I am often bored with my work”).1 We calculated a job satisfaction score by totalling the scores for all five statements: 20 or more represented a positive response, on average, to all statements, and we suggest that this …