Poor well-being of healthcare workers is reflected in patient satisfaction

The intensification of professional demands creates serious risks for the well-being of employees. In healthcare, employee well-being is also reflected in patient satisfaction. Under a heavy workload, even positive challenges such as learning new things are experienced as increased stress.

Researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä explained how staff in a health district face increasing professional demands and how these demands relate to well-being at work. In addition, the study clarified whether demands on employees were reflected in customer satisfaction.

In the study, more than a thousand employees assessed their experiences of heightened job demands, burnout at work, and commitment to work. In addition, nearly a thousand patients in the health district evaluated the way they were treated by the nursing staff.

As the researchers predicted, the experience of healthcare workers with increased time pressure and workload was linked to greater burnout. Employees working in emergency care and nurses were at particularly high risk of burnout.

Additionally, the work community’s shared experience of increased job scheduling requirements was linked to greater burnout and lower customer satisfaction. This was particularly observed in the leadership services staff.

A surprising observation was that none of the intensification requests were positively related to work engagement. In light of previous studies, employees may find certain demands such as learning new things to be positive challenges, especially when the demands are reasonable. However, this was not the case for the healthcare workers studied. It is possible that the general workload in healthcare has led to these positive challenges being experienced as additional stress as well. “

Mari Huhtala, lecturer

Research data was collected using an electronic survey in fall 2019. The study will continue in fall 2021 with the collection of follow-up data.