Impact of Social Support Networks on Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Turnover Intentions in Primary Care Teams

Social support may improve clinician well-being and teamwork in primary care, yet evidence remains limited on how social support affects job outcomes, such as job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intention among all members of primary care teams, including clinicians and staff.

To investigate the relationship between social support network characteristics in primary care teams and their impact on job satisfaction, burnout, and turnover intention among clinicians and staff.

A cross-sectional study using a sociometric network survey design.

652 primary care clinicians and staff in 23 primary care practices in New York (14) and Pennsylvania (9), which had implemented team-based primary care models.

Social support network measures were calculated at two-levels. At the participant-level, these included in-degree (incoming connections), out-degree (outgoing connections), and betweenness (frequency of appearing on the shortest path between other member pairs) centrality. At the practice-level, measures included density (observed ties as a proportion of all possible ties) and transitivity (number of closed triads). Job outcome measures included job satisfaction, burnout, and intent to leave the job.

Participants with higher out-degree centrality-indicating that they identified more team members who supported them-were less likely to intend to leave their jobs (OR = 0.77; CI 0.65-0.90; p < .001). Similarly, those in practices with greater support network density, indicating a heightened level of interaction among team members for support, were also less likely to express intentions to leave their job (OR = 0.63; CI 0.40-0.97; p < .05). Betweenness centrality was not significantly associated with the outcome variables.

Social support within primary care teams can potentially reduce turnover among primary care clinicians and staff. A better understanding of social support in primary care teams can lay a foundation for network-based interventions. Future research should test the impact of support networks on patient outcomes.