Identifying Challenges Iranian Female Physicians Facing: A Case of Hospitals in Babol in Iran

Physician job satisfaction is essential for ensuring the quality of health care services. It is vital to address physicians' problems and try to redesign their working patterns as it is closely associated with patients and health care systems as a whole. However it has been reported in related studies that physician especially female physicians encounter different challenges. Hence, this study is aimed at exploring the factors relating to female physician problems and providing some solutions. The questionnaire was distributed among female physicians in hospitals of Babol in Mazandaran province, Iran. The findings show that the challenges female physicians facing mainly consisted of factors relating to family level, occupational level, and structural level. Based on the findings of this study, some strategies to solve the identified challenges are also presented.