Work family conflict and its impact on job satisfaction and organizational commitment a study of doctors working in select govt Hospitals in northern India

Abstract

India s growing population, the rising standard of living, the burden of rapidly spreading disease, poor availability of primary health care centres, and a shortage of trained doctors, especially in public hospitals, are some of the reasons which have increased the workload and responsibilities of the Indian healthcare industry. Doctor s stressful working hours, increasing mental and physical health problems and rising cases of physical violence are some of the many issues which are leading to conflict between work and family. This imbalance has created work-family conflict which hampers job satisfaction and organizational commitment of doctors. The study is exploratory in nature, therefore, the survey questionnaire was confined to items that asses general demographic characteristics, as well as instruments measuring work-family conflict, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The data has been collected from 554 doctors, working in three government hospitals of Northern India. These hospitals were the institutions of medical education and had a bed capacity of 500 or above. The results of the study observed a moderate level of WFC among doctors working in the selected government hospitals. A significant negative relationship was also found among the dimensions of job satisfaction and WFC. A significant negative relationship was also found among the components (affective and normative) of organizational commitment and WFC. Only continuance commitment was found significant and positively related to WFC. Irregular working hours proved to be a significant contributor to WFC but proper scheduling of work and creation of a comfortable environment will help them a lot. The workload can be reduced by hiring more qualified doctors and for their retention, attractive salary packages and safe working conditions can be provided. Flexible working hours, childcare facilities, workplace-family issue, expanded employee assistance programme are some of the measures which can reduce conflict. newline