The work‐related stressors and coping strategies of group‐employed rural health care practitioners: A qualitative study

摘要

Background Escalating demands on practitioners, stagnating/dwindling resources, and diminishing autonomy have heightened patient‐care work‐related stress. Using qualitative content/thematic analysis of responses to open‐ended survey questions, plus spontaneous comments, we sought to identify rural clinicians’ subjective perceptions of their workplace stressors and typical adaptive/coping strategies. Methods Within a hybrid inductive‐deductive approach, we framed empirical themes (derived by consensus, corroborated with text segments, and extant literature) into theory‐based coding templates by which we analyzed the data. Results Of 308 (65.1% of) recipients completing questionnaires, 290 (94%) answered open‐ended questions and/or provided comments. Categorizing stressors by socio‐ecology, they cited four themes: Organizational, practitioner/staff‐related, patient‐related, and third party‐induced stressors. Organizational stressors were referenced most conspicuously. How respondents described their coping fitted the Stress, Appraisal and Coping. [Lazarus and Folkman (1984): New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company, Inc] model. Emotion‐focused were referenced more than problem‐focused approaches. Themes scarcely differed by demographics, except for marital status. Conclusions Findings highlight needs for resilience coaching, rekindling work meaningfulness, mentorship in work‐home balance/limit‐setting, supportive peer networks, and deeper teamwork.