Resilience among Employed Physicians and Mid-Level Practitioners in Upstate New York

To investigate the factors associated with resilience among medical professionals.

Administrative information from a rural health care network (1 academic medical center, 6 hospitals, 31 clinics, and 20 school health centers) was triangulated with self-report data from 308 respondents (response rate = 65.1 percent) to a 9/2013-1/2014 survey among practitioners serving a nine-county 5,600-square-mile area.

A cross-sectional questionnaire survey comprising valid measures of resilience, practice meaningfulness, satisfaction, and risk/uncertainty intolerance, nested within a prospective, community-based project.

The sampling frame included practitioners on institutional payroll, excluding voluntary/involuntary attritions and advisory board/research team members. In multivariable mixed-effects models, we regressed full-range and high-/low-resilience scores on demographics, professional satisfaction, workplace needs, risk/uncertainty intolerance, and service unit characteristics.

Relational needs, uncertainty intolerance, satisfaction ≥75 percent of the time, number of practitioners on a unit, and workload were significantly associated with resilience. Higher scores were most strongly associated with uncertainty tolerance, satisfaction, and practitioner numbers. Practitioner/unit demographics were mostly nonsignificant.

More resilient practitioners experienced frequent satisfaction, relational needs gratification, better uncertainty tolerance, lighter workloads, and practiced on units with more colleagues. Further studies should investigate well-being interventions based on these mutable factors.