Background: the recent and ongoing changes in the structure and social organization of medicine have deeply transformed medical practice.
Aim: to study the perception of these changes by physicians, the impact of these changes in their subjective wellbeing and their strategies of adjustment.
Material and methods: a scale, consisting of 54 items grouped in nine dimensions to measure physicians subjective wellbeing was devised. It was applied to a random sample of 580 physicians residing in Metropolitan Santiago and affiliated to the Colegio Médico de Chile (the Chilean Medical Association).
Results: the internal consistency analysis in the instrument showed a global Cronbach´s alpha of 90 percent.
Conclusions: these results support our methodological approach based on an initial qualitative identification of relevant topics in our local context, which afterwards were included as items in the scale to measure specific components of subjective wellbeing.