the mediating effects of job satisfaction on the association between doctor-patient relationship and ocb among physicians in china

Background: the aim of this study was to investigate ocb among physicians in china and explore whether their job satisfaction mediates the association between doctor-patient relationship (dpr) and organizational citizenship behavior (ocb). methods: this cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey was conducted among 1400 physicians in shaanxi, china in 2014. the subjects were selected using a multi-stage cluster sampling methodology. the self-administered questionnaires included ocb scale, ddprq, and pjsq. hierarchical linear regression analysis was used to estimate the effects of job satisfaction on the association between dpr and ocb. results: dpr negatively predicted four dimensions of ocb, including conscientiousness, sportsmanship, civic virtue, and altruism. dpr was negatively related to five job satisfaction dimensions, namely work satis-faction (ws), promotion satisfaction (ps), reward satisfaction (rs), supervision satisfaction (ss), and envi-ronment satisfaction (es). ws was positively correlated with conscientiousness and civic virtue; ps and ss were positively related to all four ocb dimensions; rs was positively related with civic virtue and altruism, and es was positively correlated with conscientiousness and civic virtue. ws and ps partially mediated the association between dpr and conscientiousness; ps and ss partially mediated the relation between dpr and sportsmanship; ps, ss, and es mediated the association between dpr and civic virtue; and ps, rs and ss partially mediated the relation between dpr and altruism. conclusion: job satisfaction mediated the association between dpr and ocb among chinese physicians. the poor dpr possibly reduce physicians’ job satisfaction, thereby causing a decline of ocb in hospitals. therefore, dpr improvement and job satisfaction have a great potential to promote physicians’ job perfor-mance in china.