Job Satisfaction and its determinants of Public Health Midwives: Sri Lankan experience

Job satisfaction is the level of favorableness with which employees view their work. Satisfied work force with their job will influence the countries’ productivity and ultimately overall development. Hence the job satisfaction of Public Health Midwives (PHMs) would be an important factor to consider with regard to the quality of service provided by them to the health sector of the country. Therefore the purpose of the current study was to describe the job satisfaction and factors associated with job satisfaction among Public Health Midwives in Kandy District of Sri Lanka. This is a descriptive cross sectional study and the present study was conducted among all PHMs (n=480) who have worked for more than one year in the field of Kandy district. PHMs, who were under the administration of estate and the municipality and those who had less than one year of service in the field work were not included for the study. A self-administered questionnaire was used in the study to gather information. A questionnaire constructed based on two factor theory was selected as the study instrument. The final questionnaire consisted of 13 items which represent motivator or satisfactory variables and the hygienic or dissatisfactory variables. The percentage of midwives who were satisfied with their job from the study population was 138(28.7%). Almost half of the population 264(55.1%) was neither satisfied nor dissatisfied and 78 (16.2%) of midwives were dissatisfied. No one scored as strongly dissatisfied. Median for total satisfactory variables was 7 (mean-6.214) and dissatisfactory variables was 4 (mean- 4.05). Final job satisfaction rated a median of twelve (mean-10.245). Since satisfactory variables rated more than dissatisfactory variables, it could be concluded that total satisfaction was more influenced by satisfiers (motivators) than dissatisfactory (hygienic factors) variables. Considering the results the author recommends improvement of motivational factors to increase the level of the job satisfaction of the workforce.