Objective  To survey and analyze the salary satisfaction, advices, and suggestions among physicians in public hospitals in Shanghai and provide reference for designing relevant policies via sampling survey. Methods Site survey was performed among physicians in four public hospitals in Shanghai. SPSS 18.0 was used to conduct statistical description and logistic regression analysis. Results The average salary satisfaction score of the respondents was 2.75±0.78. Logistic regression analysis showed that hospital type, sex, age, department, and title were main factors affecting the salary satisfaction in physicians. Most physicians deemed that guarantee and improvement of welfare, salary distribution considering department, post, and position differences and according to contribution and fairness, increase in the salary level and reflection of work value were helpful for improving the salary satisfaction. Conclusion At present, physicians in public hospitals in Shanghai have low salary satisfaction. The salary level is not the only aspect of salary satisfaction as physicians pay more attention to aspects such as welfare. Therefore it is necessary to maintain the current salary level, establish scientific and reasonable salary increase mechanism and salary structure, increase welfare, explore more advanced salary distribution mechanism, and ensure the progressiveness and scientificity of the salary system.