Browsing by Subject "lääkäri"

Aims. Examining job demands and recourses has become central to the study of occupational well-being. Two phenomena emerging from this framework, work engagement and job crafting, have been found to be linked to the well-being of employees. However, previous studies have largely overlooked the possible effects of personality on these relationships. In addition, studies examining the impact of work engagement and job crafting specifically on the well-being of physicians are scarce. The aim of this study was to examine the work engagement and job crafting of Finnish physicians, how these phenomena relate to the physicians’ well-being and whether personality traits affect these relationships. Methods. The sample (N = 2932) consisted of Finnish physicians, who had filled out the “Working Conditions and Health of Physicians” 2015 survey by The Finnish Medical Association, The National Institute for Health and Welfare and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. In this study, personality was assessed using the Big Five traits of the Five Factor Model and well-being with self-reported work ability, health, psychological stress and sleep symptoms. The relationships between work engagement, job crafting, personality traits and well-being were examined using linear regression. Results. Finnish physicians often felt engaged in their work but crafted their jobs only sometimes. Work engagement was consistently and fairly strongly related to better well-being, whereas for job crafting the results were mixed and the effects weak. Personality traits had hardly any effect on these relationships. Out of the Big five traits, neuroticism had the most notable effect; it somewhat weakened the connection between work engagement and well-being, was a stronger predictor than work engagement for some of the well-being indicators and added significantly to the proportion of variance explained by those models. Some weak interactions were also observed between work engagement and some personality traits, where the link between engagement and well-being differed in strength depending on the personality trait. Conclusions. These findings support previous observations that work engagement is linked to the well-being of employees. It points to the fact that besides preventing and treating burnout, the promotion of work engagement may have significant positive effects on the well-being of physicians. Regarding the role of personality traits in occupational well-being, at least neuroticism should be taken into account in future studies as a possible risk factor for the well-being of employees.