We also examined differences by resident post-graduate years 1 4 since the resident's individual responsibilities might differ by seniority.
The factors that impact on decisions as to whether to work solely in the public sector or engage in dual practice vary amongst doctors, particularly at differing levels of seniority: "For senior doctors it is rather more attractive to have professional improvement and better health equipment in hospitals than more income" (Paediatrician #8, Ministry of Health).
Participants included nurses and physicians from surgery and obstetrics-gynaecology departments, clinical services staff (e.g. pharmacy, microbiology), administrative staff and hospital management, of differing levels of seniority (Table 1).
Consenters did not differ on job seniority, weekly working hours, district, job group, or sickness absence the last 3 months.
Furthermore, rewarding potential and reward preferences also seemed to differ according to age and seniority.
Univariate analysis suggested that the prevalence of all three types of headache differed significantly with age, marital status, and seniority.
Non-participants did not differ from participants in age, sex, working hours, job seniority or LTPA.
Background variables that significantly differed between the four groups (i.e., gender, seniority and ward type, see Table 1) were controlled (except for age, which highly correlated with seniority, r = .83, p <. 001, and is less relevant than seniority for clinicians' attitudes toward the patients).
The assessors were from similar practice backgrounds (UK) and seniority as GPs (20 vs. 15 years), but differed in experience of assessment (15 vs. 3 years) and familiarity with the LAP (RMK involved in the design, development and evaluation of the LAP, MJ new to it) More resources need to be devoted to cross-training and calibration of the assessors.
The results are not necessarily generalisable to all doctors and may have differed had there been equal numbers of doctors by different ethnic background, PMQ regions and seniority.
