چکیده (انگلیسی):

Background:It has for years been discussed whether practice staff should be involved in patient care in general
practice to a higher extent. The research concerning task delegation within general practice is generally increasing,
but the literature focusing on its influence on general practitioners' and their staff’s job satisfaction appears to be
sparse even though job satisfaction is acknowledged as an important factor associated with both patient
satisfaction and medical quality of care. Therefore, the overall aim of this study was 1) to review the current
research on the relation between task delegation and general practitioners' and their staff’s job satisfaction and,
additionally, 2) to review the evidence of possible explanations for this relation.
Methods:A systematic literature review. We searched the four databases PubMed, Cinahl, Embase, and Scopus
systematically. The immediate relevance of the retrieved articles was evaluated by title and abstract by the first
author, and papers that seemed to meet the aim of the review were then fully read by first author and last author
independently judging the eligibility of content.
Results:We included four studies in the review. They explored views and attitudes of the staff, encompassing
nurses as well as practice managers. Only one of the included studies also explored general practitioners' views and
attitudes, hence making it impossible to establish any syntheses on this relation. According to the studies, the staff’s
overall attitude towards task delegation was positive and led to increased job satisfaction, probably because task
delegation comprised a high degree of work autonomy.
Conclusions:The few studies included in our review suggest that task delegation within general practice may
be seen by the staff as an overall positive issue contributing to their job satisfaction, primarily due to
perceived autonomy in the work. However, because of the small sample size comprising only qualitative
studies, and due to the heterogeneity of these studies, we cannot draw unambiguous conclusions although
we point towards tendencies.