Abstract
BackgroundPast research shows that physicians experience high ill-being (i.e., work-life conflict, stress, burnout) but also high well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, engagement).ObjectiveTo shed light on how medical faculty’s experiences of their job demands and job resources might differentially affect their ill-being and their well-being with special attention to the role that the work-life interface plays in these processes.MethodsQualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze interviews from 30 medical faculty (19 women, 11 men, average tenure 13.36 years) at a top research hospital in Canada.FindingsMedical faculty’s experiences of work-life conflict were severe. Faculty’s job demands had coalescing (i.e., interactive) effects on their stress, work-life conflict, and exhaustion. Although supportive job resources (e.g., coworker support) helped to mitigate the negative effects of job demands, stimulating job resources (e.g., challenging work) contributed to greater work-life conflict, stress, and exhaustion. Thus, for these medical faculty job resources play a dual-role for work-life conflict. Moreover, although faculty experienced high emotional exhaustion, they did not experience the other components of burnout (i.e., reduced self-efficacy, and depersonalization). Some faculty engaged in cognitive reappraisal strategies to mitigate their experiences of work-life conflict and its harmful consequences.ConclusionThis study suggests that the precise nature and effects of job demands and job resources may be more complex than current research suggests. Hospital leadership should work to lessen unnecessary job demands, increase supportive job resources, recognize all aspects of job performance, and, given faculty’s high levels of work engagement, encourage a climate that fosters work-life balance.
Highlights
A growing concern for healthcare professionals and the general public is physicians’ ill-being, that is their impaired psychological adjustment, coping, and functioning (Ryff et al, 2006), exemplified by stress, work-life conflict, and burnout
Physicians have been found to have high work engagement (Mache et al, 2016), and the majority say they would choose their profession all over again (Dyrbye et al, 2011). How is it that physicians experience such high ill-being and high well-being? We propose that physicians’ high levels of job resources and job demands play a central role in explaining this contradiction
While engagement is typically associated with positive outcomes, such as better performance and health (Bakker et al, 2014), we propose that engagement could lead to negative outcomes, such as worklife conflict and burnout, because employees could become too engaged in their work, over-involved, and subsequently experience time conflicts between work and home (Byrne and Canato, 2017)
Summary
A growing concern for healthcare professionals and the general public is physicians’ ill-being, that is their impaired psychological adjustment, coping, and functioning (Ryff et al, 2006), exemplified by stress, work-life conflict, and burnout. These problems are even more pressing today, as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) further burdens healthcare professionals and their families (Mahmood et al, 2020). A key predictor of physicians’ burnout is their high levels of work-life conflict (Langballe et al, 2011) Despite such struggles with ill-being, physicians report high well-being, which involves positive evaluations and reactions in daily life (Diener, 2006), such as job satisfaction and work engagement. Past research shows that physicians experience high ill-being (i.e., worklife conflict, stress, burnout) and high well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, engagement)
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