Quality of work-life among young medical doctors in Poland

<i>Objectives</i>. Human resource management is the most important function in the management of organizations and significantly affects the quality of work-life (QWL). Recently, the health sector started to be interested in the QWL among doctors. The study aim was to assess the QWL among Polish medical residents. <i>Methods</i>. The questionnaire for the medical residents was prepared using data acquired from a review of the international literature. In October 2017, the questionnaires were completed twice by 10 residents with a 2-week interval to assess the inter-rater reliability. The online questionnaire was distributed between April and May 2018. <i>Results</i>. A total of 243 doctors responded, over one-third of whom were men. The QWL was very high for 2.06% of the participants, high for 23.87%, moderate for 27.16%, low for 38.27% and very low for 8.64%. Among the factors that significantly relate to the QWL are the number of working hours per week (<i>p</i> = 0.007) and the general quality of life (<i>p</i> = 0.000). <i>Conclusion</i>. Low QWL is the result of inadequate management in Polish hospitals and residents’ QWL still needs to be improved. We propose to conduct such a survey periodically among all young medical doctors to systematically improve their QWL.