Meso-Level Organisational Factors Influencing Healthcare Workers’ Resilience: Evidence from a Scoping Review

Individual resilience mitigates the adverse effects of workplace stress and poor psychosocial outcomes for healthcare workers, first and foremost nurses and physicians (Aiken et al., 2024).

Multiple scholarly disciplines and approaches, including health services research, organization studies, nursing studies, or occupational health, tried to understand the most relevant factors that impact on professionals’ resilience and well-being (e.g. Diehl et al., 2021; Kelly et al., 2021; Kohnen et al., 2021). However, previous reviews mostly focused on individual characteristics or overall organisational factors, devoting less attention to meso-level organizational factors (e.g. Rees et al., 2019; Teoh et al., 2020). Furthermore, they often collect evidence from diverse settings (acute care, nursing homes, general practice) overlooking the specificities of work in hospital contexts, and concentrate exclusively on nurses or physicians (e.g. Hall et al.,2016). Also, we lack reviews that include and compare studies carried out before Covid-19 and during the pandemic.

This scoping review aims to systematise factors at the meso-organizational level (e.g. leadership, teamwork, etc.) that affect the well-being, mental health and resilience of healthcare workers, focusing on empirical research conducted in the last ten years in the hospital sector of developed countries.

Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, out of 7,462 papers published in the last 10 years yielded by our initial search, the final sample for data extraction included 66 papers. We identified four macro themes: supervisors, team relationships, work conditions, and workplace aggression, and we showed how findings differ across doctors and nurses and before and during the pandemic. We argue that healthcare organisations should focus on valuing/empowering middle managers, fostering team cohesion, implementing supportive policies, and addressing workplace aggression to enhance professionals' resilience, mental health, and well-being. Finally, we identify areas for further research and intervention.

References

Aiken(2024) e079931
Diehl(2021) e0245798
Hall(2016) e0159015
Kelly(2021) doi:10.1177/0886260517738779
Kohnen(2024) doi:10.1186/s12960-023-00886-6
Rees(2019) doi:10.1177/1355819619840373
Teoh(2020) doi:10.1097/HMR.0000000000000207