Job Satisfaction at the Height of the Storm: Evidence From Frontline Clinicians

Introduction

WHO declared Coronavirus a pandemic in 2020. Having spread like a wildfire, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the business sector in varied ways (Majumder & Biswas,2021. COVID-19 has imposed extraordinary physical challenges by creating a learning environment of its own (Rakowsky et al., 2020). While they lack the required workplace settings and expertise in treating infectious diseases amidst COVID 19, healthcare professionals are the first to come in contact with SARS- CoV-2 (Alhabbab et al., 2021). As these issues are severe in less developed economies, it is paramount for healthcare workers to feel satisfied with their current jobs (Zhang et al., 2020). Healthcare workers are facing unprecedented stress due to enormous workload, inadequate personal protective equipment, moral dilemmas, and isolation from their families (Lai et al., 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has led to symptoms of anxiety and stress among healthcare workers. Stress is a major cause of work-related diseases, especially among healthcare professionals with more diverse and unknown demands at the time of the pandemic (Kabbash et al., 2020).

Among healthcare workers, resident doctors, being front liners are burdened with extreme accountability as their actions and omissions immensely impact human life (Antoniou et al., 2003). They face many stressors due to multiple clinical and educational roles while delivering hospital care (Khalafallah et al., 2020). High levels of stress during residency are associated with an increased frequency of medical errors, providing sub-optimal care to patients, Voltmer et al., 2012). Stress occurs when they feel hard to do their jobs due to tension, anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and low personal accomplishment related to the nature of their occupation specifically at the time of the pandemic (Ekundayo,2014). Stress among residents may result from role characteristics such as role conflicts between duty to supervisors, attending physicians or patient supervision, role ambiguities i. e. tasks not well defined, and role overload i.e. too many tasks and daily workload for the available time (Ebrahimi & Kargar,2018).

In the pandemic situation, they are the initial contact in the hospitals for COVID-infected patients (Rossi et al., 2019). Involvement of medical residents as frontline workers with inadequate clinical training, access to personal protective equipment, and lack of knowledge have induced a sense of fear in them (Tariq et al., 2020). The huge burden imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic on the critical care provided by medical residents extends a direct impact on their mental well-being characterized by exhaustion (AlJhani et al., 2021). Having prolonged contact with patients, from the testing moment to the result for SARS-CoV-2, they face higher stress levels that deteriorate their job satisfaction compromising patient care quality (Dimitriu et al., 2020; Alrawashdeh et al., 2021). Resident doctors report various sources of work-related anxiety at the time of the pandemic about the possibility of contracting COVID-19(Collins et al., 2021). Such occupational stressors extend a negative impact on their job satisfaction (Haque & Oino, 2019; Sackey & Sanda, 2011). Also, stress leads to serious consequences if organizations ignore the changes in the environment (de Vries et al., 2009).Hence, this study tries to highlight the factors that enhance a resident doctor’s work satisfaction at the time of COVID- 19 pandemic.