Caring work environments and clinician emotional exhaustion: Empirical test of an exploratory model

Burnout has been a chronic problem in the workplace, especially in health care. Although the literature has examined many antecedents to burnout, specific workplace practices to reduce burnout remain elusive. Nascent research has begun to examine how health care work places can become more caring for workers. Although psychological safety has been proposed as an important predictor of burnout, relations have not yet been comprehensively examined.

Underpinned by conservation of resources theory, we argue that a caring work environment, in which compassion and interpersonal support are key priorities, provides resources for workers, which should increase psychological safety and in turn help reduce emotional exhaustion.

To explore our proposed model, we conducted a paper-and-pencil survey of clinical health care providers working in medical units of a large acute care hospital. Response rate was 44% (n = 631).

Analysis found support for a moderated-mediation model in which psychological safety partially mediated relations between caring climate and emotional exhaustion, and this effect was stronger for those who were less empowered in their jobs.

Our findings suggest that a caring work environment holds psychological resources that may help buffer against resource losses through increased psychological safety.

Although health care work environments will continue to experience constraints on key resources, worker emotional exhaustion may be mitigated through a focus on systematically increasing caring and compassion in the work environment, as opposed to relying on individual workers to support one another in an uncaring workplace.