OUR LATEST SURVEY data show that hospitalists are posting slightly better satisfaction rates this year than in 2022.
In our 2023 survey, nearly two-thirds (61%) of hospitalists said they’re satisfied or very satisfied with their careers. Another 25% said they’re somewhat satisfied, and just under 15% said they’re somewhat or very unsatisfied.
Compared to our 2022 survey data, the 2023 satisfaction levels represent a modest improvement. When we look at hospitalists who reported being satisfied in one of the three categories—satisfied, very satisfied or somewhat satisfied—we saw an increase of almost four points—from 81.9% to 85.7%—for full-time adult hospitalists from 2022 to 2023.
Here are more details on how hospitalists rated their career satisfaction in this year’s Today’s Hospitalist survey.
Group type
Our survey data found some big differences in the satisfaction levels of hospitalists working in different group types.
Among hospitalists working for national hospitalist management companies, for example, larger numbers reported being somewhat dissatisfied (19.3% vs. the mean for all adult hospitalists of 11.1%) while fewer reported being very satisfied (7% vs. the mean of 19.6%).
While hospitalists working for national management companies reported the lowest satisfaction numbers in our survey, their satisfaction levels improved since last year. In our 2022 survey, 68.6% of hospitalists working for national management companies reported being satisfied, compared with 77.2% in 2023. In 2022, 31.4% of those hospitalists reported being unsatisfied, compared to 22.8% in 2023—so satisfaction levels have improved year to year.
Meanwhile, hospitalists in primary care/multispecialty practices had the highest levels of satisfaction in our survey, with 25% reporting being very satisfied (compared to the mean of 19.6%) and 46.2% saying they’re satisfied (vs. the mean of 41.1%).
Patient volume
Our data showed one clear trend: Hospitalist satisfaction levels go up as patient volumes go down.
For hospitalists with nine patient encounters a shift or less, for example, 95% said they’re satisfied. For hospitalists with 21 or more patient encounters per shift, 77.4% of hospitalists reported being satisfied.
But even those lower satisfaction numbers are still higher this year than in 2022. For hospitalists with 18 or more patient encounters per shift, about 8% more in this year’s survey said they’re satisfied than in 2022.
Years as a hospitalist
When it comes to how many years hospitalists have been in the specialty, satisfaction data reveal no clear trends.
Among hospitalists with two years or less in the specialty, 87.9% said they’re satisfied. That number drops to 75.7% for hospitalists with three to four years in the field, then bumps up to 87.9% for hospitalists in the specialty between 10 and 14 years.
For hospitalists with 20-plus years in the specialty, 91.2% said they’re satisfied.
Full- vs. part-time
Of interest, full-time hospitalists reported significantly better satisfaction rates than their part-time colleagues. While 76.8% of part-time hospitalists said they’re satisfied, that lagged behind the 86.7% of full-time hospitalists who reported the same.
See more data on hospitalist job satisfaction levels at our 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey coverage
