Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of job characteristics, job performance and organizational commitment on job satisfaction of hospital dietitians. The first survey was carried out on 74 hospital dietitians to determine their demographic characteristics, job characteristics, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The second survey was carried out on 47 hospital foodservice dietitians to determine their job performance. Thirty-two percent of the subjects were aged between 26 and 30, and 62.2% had Bachelor's degrees. The dietitians felt most satisfied by their co-workers, followed by the work-itself, supervision, pay, and promotion possibilities. Dietitians who had a higher education were satisfied with pay and supervision. The longer the length of employment, the more the satisfaction with the work-itself and pay, plus the higher the monthly wage the more the satisfaction with the work-itself, pay, supervision, and co-workers. lob satisfaction was high in the group that scored high on autonomy, feedback, task identity, and friendship of in the job characteristic inventory. The job performances of nutrition counseling(r= 0.469, p<0.01), nutrition education(r= 0.446, p<0.01) and management of therapeutic diet(r= 0.394, p<0.01) were positively correlated with job satisfaction. The R2 for the multiple regression model was 0.677, indicating that 67.7% of the variance in job satisfaction could be accounted for by feedback, organizational commitment, nutrition counseling performance, and nutrition education performance. In conclusion, the level of job satisfaction for hospital dietitians would appear to improve with increased feedback, organizational commitment, and opportunity for nutrition counseling and nutrition education.

• Keywords: hospital dietitians; job characteristics; job performance; organizational commitment; job satisfaction