Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

10-2024

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7005-0518

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Timothy Atkinson

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Heather Rasmussen

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Mark Weatherly

Abstract

Work-family conflict and burnout in the healthcare industry are significant problems resulting in cognitive, physical, and emotional challenges for healthcare workers and dangerous consequences for patient care. Due to the work-family conflict and burnout they experience, many healthcare workers are leaving the industry altogether. Most studies on work-family conflict and burnout focus on the hospital setting. However, it is estimated that likely more than a million healthcare workers work in the private practice setting. Consequently, this study’s problem is that little is known about how the private practice healthcare setting affects employees’ work-family conflict and burnout. The purpose of this qualitative multicase study was to gain a clear understanding of the role that organizational resources and flexible work-life balance policies, specifically in the private practice environment, play in contributing to or mitigating work-family conflict and burnout. This study had nine participants at six different private practices. Coding data from the semistructured interviews helped the following themes to emerge: dedication/loyalty, understaffed practice, employer flexibility, lacking in policies and procedures, and substandard fringe benefits. The researcher evaluated the themes and research questions using the conservation of resources theory as a theoretical lens through which the role of resources was addressed. Benefits and labor data were also used to evaluate interview data. The major findings were that the participants’ private practices were understaffed and did not provide sufficient fringe benefits, which negatively impacted participants’ work-family conflict and burnout. However, the private practice setting offered great flexibility, which many participants felt outweighed the negative consequences of missing resources.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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