"This stuff matters": Rural health care leaders and meaningfulness at work

Rural health care leaders face unique stressors and opportunities that shape their experience of meaningfulness at work. Understanding how these leaders derive meaningfulness from their work is critical to fostering well-being and facilitating positive work outcomes.

We examined how rural health care leaders find meaning in their work and identified the workplace factors that contribute to or undermine their experiences of meaningfulness.

We conducted 30 semistructured interviews with rural health care leaders to understand the factors contributing to health care leaders' stress and burnout and what they believed could minimize workplace stressors. Interviews were one-on-one, recorded, transcribed, and deidentified before being inductively coded. Three rounds of inductive coding yielded a data structure depicting the first-order concepts, second-order themes, and aggregate dimensions that help explain participants' experiences of meaningfulness at work.

Our analysis revealed three broader dimensions related to health care leaders' experiences of meaningfulness at work: relational fulfillment, work impact reinforcement, and strains on meaningfulness. Specifically, health care leaders' experiences of meaningful work were positively shaped by their relationships and impact with employees, patients, and the community and negatively influenced by feeling unappreciated and organizational constraints.

Our research identifies opportunities for organizations and boards of directors to foster rural health care leaders' meaningfulness at work by adopting intentional approaches to developing high-quality connections that can offer support, build trust, and make leaders feel valued. Through these efforts, leaders could strengthen their relationships at work and enhance their capabilities to serve better the employees, patients, and communities who benefit from their work.