Male occupational therapists: A profile of job satisfaction and work environment variables

Occupational therapy is a female‐dominated profession with only 4% of all clinicians in Canada being men. Traditionally, occupational therapy training programmes have had limited success recruiting men into their educational programmes and those men who do qualify as therapists tend to work only in the profession for short periods of time. The purpose of this study was to identify work‐related factors that impact on male occupational therapists. Specifically, five job satisfaction factors (work, pay, co‐workers, supervision and promotional opportunities), work environment traits and the demographic characteristics of male occupational therapists in Canada were examined. A mailed survey questionnaire was sent to all male therapists who were members of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (n = 199) during the 1990–1991 membership year; 83% of the sample responded. In terms of job satisfaction, male occupational therapists indicated that they were relatively dissatisfied with their work, pay, promotional opportunities, supervision and co‐workers as a group. However, they characterised their work environments as being above average in terms of supervisor support, autonomy and physical comfort, whereas they obtained a well below‐average score for the control dimension. Further research is needed to explore the issue of job satisfaction among occupational therapy personnel and to identify what factors impact on the job retention of male occupational practitioners.