BACKGROUND: Understanding the job satisfaction and dissatisfaction of physicians might help to improve health care in Japan. Nevertheless, no job-satisfaction scale for physicians has been validated in Japanese.
OBJECTIVE: To develop a Japanese version of the Physician Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS), a multi-dimensional questionnaire developed by the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Career Satisfaction Study Group (CSSG), and to evaluate its reliability and validity.
METHODS: A Japanese version of the JSS was developed according to the standard protocol of scale translation. A focus group of 7 Japanese physicians was established to identify “Japanese-specific” facets of job satisfaction. After revising the scale based on the discussions of the focus group, a cross-sectional sample of 87 Japanese physicians from hospitals in different regions completed the Japanese version of the Physician Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS-J) to assess its reliability and validity.
RESULTS: A focus group identified a Japanese-specific facet, “prestige”. Content validity was also established through the focus group. Internal consistency ranged from 0.53 to 0.83. Test-retest reliability, convergent and discriminant validity were good to excellent.
CONCLUSIONS: Although the overall results suggest that the JSS-J can be applied to assess the job satisfaction of Japanese physicians, further qualitative research is required to refine the JSS-J.

In Europe and America, it is reported that residents develops burnout syndrome or depression by their stress, and these are connected with dropouts from their training program and undesirable outcomes of the patients such as unethical practice. Recently, though resident's poor working conditions and death from overwork, etc. become problems also in Japan.But, Japanese resident's stressor is uncertain.
1) Focus group interview was executed for 25 junior residents in 10 facilities, and their stressor were explored.
2) As a result, three cateogories ; physiological stressor as one human being, stressor as a new member of society, and stressor as a trainee doctor and beginner novice doctor was extracted.
3) Three stressors were named the life gap, the society gap, and the profession gap respectively. The stressor of junior resident was described as the product what was born by the gap of medical student and becoming a doctor.
4) Japanese residents have various stressors. Stressor as a trainee doctor was a stressor peculiar to Japanese junior residents.
5) Stress management should be done considering such a stressor in the light of safety and effective clinical training.

1)Continuing medical education (CME) systems were researched in 10 countries. In all countries but one CME is mandatory. Only Spain has voluntary CME, as does Japan.
2)The traditional CME systems in many countries were changed after 2000. We believe this change reflects a global revolution associated with a new wave of medical risk management.
3)To provide better medical services, we must keep improving Japan's CME system. Such improvement is an important responsibility to society.

Objective: To investigate the current state of awareness and practice among hospital staff in advance care planning (ACP). Methods: A total of 782 hospital staff workers were administered an anonymous questionnaire. Results: Among the participants, 27.7% answered “I have discussed the will of end-of-life care in family.” and 11.0% answered “I have discussed the surrogate decision maker.” Moreover, only 1.1% of the respondents answered “I have made document of end-of-life care in family.” Conclusion: The awareness and practice among hospital staff in ACP is still developing, suggesting the need for more knowledge and experience.