Abstract
The effective administration of hospital with innovation and human resource practices is a matter of grave concern because hospitals are becoming bigger and more specialized. Biomedical engineers who manage medical machineries and tools used to deliver healthcare services in a hospital setting play an important role in providing customers good quality services. Maintaining job satisfaction of biomedical engineers is, thus, important in the delivery of quality care. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study aiming to determine factors affecting job satisfaction of biomedical engineers working in general hospitals. The study population consisted of biomedical engineers at 79 general hospitals of 26 regions based on the registry of the Korea Medical Engineering Association (KMEA). The data were collected using a self-administerd questionnaire between May and July of 2009. Job satisfaction was assessed with 19 items covering 3 dimensions of work-external, work-internal, and organizational aspects (Cronbach's ${\alpha}=0.884$), resulting in an average summary score. Statistical analysis was conducted with SPSS for Windows version 15.0. The mean score of job satisfaction was 3.50 (${\pm}0.04$). There were statistically significant differences in job satisfaction according to age, health status, job position, duration of work as a biomedical engineer, years in the current workplace, difficulty at work, intent to change job, and the amount of support from superiors and colleagues. In multiple regression analysis, the factors affecting job satisfaction of biomedical engineers were salary, health status, and support of superiors and colleagues ($r^2=0.512$). Effective motivation-plans, taking into account organizational characteristics and the working environment of the hospital, may help to improve the job satisfaction of biomedical engineers.
