Occupational burnout, job satisfaction and flourishing among healthcare workers in western China: a network analysis

Abstract Background Healthcare workers suffered with high prevalence of occupational burnout, which might be related with their job satisfaction and well-being. This study aimed to provide evidence of complex interrelations among occupational burnout, job satisfaction, and flourishing, and identify key variables from the perspective of network structure among healthcare workers. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted between July and October 2021, and 922 healthcare workers were recruited to report their sociodemographic characteristics, occupational burnout, job satisfaction, and flourishing. Network analysis was conducted to investigate the interrelations of dimensions in occupational burnout, job satisfaction, and flourishing communities, and identify central variables and bridges connecting different dimensions with different bridge strength thresholds in the network structure. The Network Comparison Test (NCT) was conducted to examine the gender differences in networks. Results In the network, feeling exhausted at work (strength: 1.42) and feeling frustrated at work (1.27) in occupational burnout community, and interested in daily activities (1.32) in flourishing community were central variables. Bridges in the network were job reward satisfaction (bridge strength: 0.31), satisfaction with job itself (0.25), and job environment satisfaction (0.19) in job satisfaction community, as well as interested in daily activities (0.29) and feeling respectable (0.18) in flourishing community, with bridges selected with top 20% bridge strengths. Feeling frustrated at work (0.14) in occupational burnout community and leading a purposeful and meaningful life (0.11) in flourishing community became bridges when using thresholds of top 25% and 30% bridge strengths, respectively. We also observed higher network densities in females (network density: 0.37) than that in males (0.34) and gender differences in the distribution of partial correlation coefficients (M = 0.27, P = 0.017). Conclusions In the network structure of occupational burnout-job satisfaction-flourishing, feeling frustrated at work in occupational burnout community and interested in daily activities in flourishing community were both central variables and bridges, which may be targeted variables to intervene to alleviate the overall level of symptoms in the network and therefore prevent poor health outcomes in healthcare workers.