Risk and Protective Factors of Well-Being among Healthcare Staff. A Thematic Analysis.

Sabrina Berlanda,Federica De Cordova,Marta Fraizzoli,Monica Pedrazza

doi:10.3390/ijerph17186651

Sabrina Berlanda, Federica De Cordova + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17186651

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify physical and psychosocial working conditions to improve well-being at work among healthcare staff. This is a potent area of inquiry given the relationship between healthcare staff well-being and service quality and other key organizational characteristics. However, while numerous studies in this area have used a quantitative methodology, very few have applied qualitative methodologies gathering subjective descriptions of the sources of well-being, providing in so doing significant data to explore in depth the factors that influence well-being in healthcare systems. We gathered qualitative data analyzing open-ended questions about risk and protective factors of well-being at work. The sample was made of 795 professionals answering an online questionnaire. Answers were coded and analyzed using the thematic analysis with an inductive approach (data-driven). We identified four themes strongly affecting professional well-being in health-care staff: Interactions, Working Conditions, Emotional Responses to Work, and Competence and Professional Growth. Our findings suggest possible strategies and actions that may be effective in helping to calibrate case-specific support and monitoring interventions to improve health and well-being of healthcare staff. We also discuss the implications of the study and suggest possible avenues for future empirical research.

Highlights

The creation and implementation of effective healthcare systems is generally regarded as an essential step in a country’s development [1]
Our research question was as follows: how do people directly involved in the healthcare work confer meaning to “source of well-being at work” and “risk for well-being at work”? To answer this question, an online self-report questionnaire was administered including six open-ended questions on the topic; data were analyzed according to thematic analysis, more apt to deepen the subjective viewpoint of healthcare staff [60]
Word Frequency shows the words used by healthcare staff when asked to indicate three protective factors of well-being, We used word frequency queries in NVivo 11 to list the words that occurred most frequently in while Figure 2 shows the words used by the same groups to indicate three risk factors for their answers to open-ended questions

Summary

Introduction

The creation and implementation of effective healthcare systems is generally regarded as an essential step in a country’s development [1]. Healthcare staff is an umbrella term involving a wide array of professional roles engaged in actions whose primary intent is to enhance health. Educators play a connection role among different specialists (social workers, psychologists, child psychiatrists, and neuropsychiatrists, etc.) and between the life in the community and the outside world (school, family etc.). Their task is to structure daily routines in order to apply a multidisciplinary project of care, organizing effectively social and healthcare resources, in order to enhance subjective potentialities and to increase personal autonomy.

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