Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate the general characteristics of public health nutritionists, the current status of nutrition services operation, the recognition about nutrition services of public health center related man power, the job satisfaction and self-assessment and the need for a retraining course of public health nutritionists. The subjects were 58 public health nutritionists who responded to the questionnaire distributed at the annual retraining program in 1998. The results of this study are summarized as follows. 1) 46.5% of the nutritonists were 26-30 years old, 62.1% were 4 year university graduates 74.1% were food and nutriton majors and 51.7% were daily workers. 2) Among the public health center-related manpower, the recognition about nutrition services was the highest for the manager of family health section, followed by the head of public health centers, and then the general nurse in public health centers. 3) The ranking of the reasons for job satisfaction of the public health nutritionists was, relationship with colleagues(3.84), inhabitants response after nutrition counselling(3.53), specialized value realization/conviction about duty(3.35), contents of the work(3.10), value achievement(3.08), self achievement/development(3.00), self discretion(2.92), participation in policy decisions(2.90), work load(2.75), chance of retraining and acquistion of new information(2.73), working environment(2.69), supervision/support by superiors(2.67), salary(2.38), supply of necessary education material, technique(2.37), and budget security(2.22). 4) The satisfaction of the inhibitant's responses after nutrition counseling was the highest among the 4 year university graduates(p<0.05), the satisfaction of the specialized value realization/conviction about duty was the highest among the nutritionists 26-30 years old(p<0.05). Food and nutrition majors(p<0.05) and those having worked less than 3-5years at public health centers also showed much satisfaction(p<0.05). Satisfaction with the salary was the lowest among the food and nutrition majors(p<0.01) and daily workers(p<0.001). The satisfaction with the participation in policy decisions was the lowest among the daily workers(p<0.01). 5) The ranking for the level of self-assessment were, nutrition and dietetic practice(2.92), communication(2.80), management(2.77), public health science and practice(2.66)(p<0.01). The general characteristics such as the level of education, major, employment condition, current public health center's tenure, and charge experience of the nutrition guidance work were not significantly related to self-assessment except the management part(p<0.05). The higher the satisfaction of specialized value realization/conviction about the duty, the better the total score on the self-assessment(p<0.05).

• Keywords: public health nutritionists; job satisfaction; self-assessment