The purpose of this study was to find out the effect of job stress, and the coping strategy of hospital workers on job satisfaction.

468 self-administered questionnaires, were obtained from 120 doctors, 194 nurses, 45pharmacists and 109 administrators at a university hospital located in Seoul. The sociodemographic characteristics, personality types, degree of social support, job stresses, coping strategies, and job satisfaction were all assessed from the questionnaires.

The analysis of job stress, according to occupation, showed that the most important job-related stress-inducing factors were: for doctors, role overload, and poor advancement opportunity; for nurses, role overload, and career development and wages; for pharmacists, role overload and lack of recognition from other health professionals; and for administrators, career development and wages, and organizational inefficiency. Job satisfaction had a significant positive correlation with control strategy, and a negative correlation with role ambiguity, career development and wages, personal relationship, role overload, and symptom management strategy. Job satisfaction was significantly influenced by control strategy, occupation, role ambiguity, person with an 'A' type personality and gender, from a multiple regression analysis.

The results of this study suggested that to increase the job satisfaction for hospital workers, they need to be encouraged to use control strategies; create a supportive hospital atmospheres for social supports; re-evaluation, structuring and a new job design are all required to reduce role ambiguity.