Medical personnel

In 2014 Bodenheimer and Sinsky published the Quadruple Aim model, which argued that healthcare provider wellbeing was the missing link to improving patient and population health outcomes, as well as cost containment. Rather than treating burnout, however, experts in fields outside healthcare are finding validity in promoting thriving at work as a means to prevent burnout and improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and productivity. The purposes of this study were to investigate the relationship between thriving and emotional exhaustion (which is widely considered a core element of burnout) in healthcare providers, and the impact thriving had on primary care population health outcomes as measured by quantifiable value-based quality performance metrics. Using Georges' (2013) Emancipatory Theory of Compassion and Bodenheimer and Sinsky's Quadruple Aim as conceptual frameworks, this descriptive, non-experimental study used advanced applied biostatistical techniques to analyze archival data from the December 2018 UCHealth Physician and Advanced Practice Provider Voice Survey as well as provider performance scores from the same time period. Results of the study were mixed, showing that while there is an inverse relationship between thriving and emotional exhaustion in healthcare providers, thriving did not predict population health outcomes. By evaluating thriving in healthcare providers in relation to emotional exhaustion and in context of value-based health care delivery systems, this study was the first of its kind.

Personal wellness and burnout have been common themes in research studies regarding professional satisfaction and career success. Personality characteristics in relation to job and career success among professionals have also been included in countless studies. However, Bateman and Crant (1993) defined and began research on the specific construct of the proactive personality and how it related to personal achievement, satisfaction, and success among executives. This dissertation study is an extension of their research in that the relationship between proactive personality, job satisfaction and levels of burnout among Licensed Mental Health Counselors in Florida specifically, is being examined. While proactive personality positively and significantly related to job satisfaction and satisfaction with being a counselor among the participants in this study, it did not significantly relate to feelings of emotional exhaustion or feelings of depersonalization toward clients. When age, salary, years licensed, and proactive personality in relation to job satisfaction and levels of burnout were included in the statistical analysis, proactive personality and salary positively related to job satisfaction, personal accomplishment, and satisfaction with being a counselor, but the relationships were not significant. Hence, the results of this study provides useful information regarding proactive personality and how it relates to the overall job satisfaction, levels of burnout among clinicians, and to assist in the development of wellness programs, burnout prevention, and in the empowerment of mental health professionals in this demanding field.

The purpose of this study was to explore what keeps nurses in nursing by examining the impact of the relational experiences between the nurse and her or his patient in the context of the nursing situation. Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenology grounded the study and was the method used to interpret the registered nurse participants' meaning of their everydayness. The nurses' first hand perspectives elicited implications for nursing practice. This qualitative research study examined what keeps nurses in nursing. The eight registered nurse participants provided rich descriptive data from which four relational themes emerged: Practicing from Inner Core Beliefs, Understanding the Other from Within, Making a Difference, and Nursing as an Evolving Process. The hermeneutical interpretative process guided the researcher to synthesize the themes into a constitutive pattern of meaning which the researcher named Intentional Compassion Energy. In intentional caring consciousness, the nurse intentionally knows the nursed as whole. Compassion energy is the intersubjective gift of compassion that gives nurses the opportunity to be with the nursed. Compassion energy is composed of compassionate presence, patterned nurturance and intentionally knowing the nursed and self as whole. Thus, intentional compassion energy is defined as the regeneration of nurses' capacity to foster interconnectedness when the nurse activates the intent to nurse. Intentional compassion energy was discovered in the meaning of the nurse participants being in their everydayness of practice. The participants described the intention to care compassionately as the grounding of their practice, striving to understand the other, to make a difference while living their nursing as an evolving process. Hermeneutic phenomenology provided the opening to discover what keeps nurses in nursing.