摘要
Background Emotional exhaustion is a significant problem among healthcare professionals, leading to more adverse patient events and poorer medical quality. Although previous research has discovered an association between workplace factors and emotional exhaustion, the complex interactions among these factors have not been examined.Methods This study adopted the Extended Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ). Data from 3998 valid responses from doctors and nurses were collected at a medical center in Taiwan in 2016 and 2017. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to test the reliability and validity of survey responses. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was applied to identify the causal configurations of seven workplace factors: perception of management, job satisfaction, teamwork, safety climate, stress recognition, working conditions, and work-life balance, leading to high emotional exhaustion.Results Several distinct causal configurations leading to high emotional exhaustion were identified, with an overall solution coverage of 0.764 and consistency of 0.831. Critical factors, such as perceived management support, teamwork, safety climate, and job satisfaction, appeared in multiple configurations. Many configurations exhibited considerable overlap. The two configurations with higher unique coverage explained a significant proportion of emotional exhaustion cases. The findings highlight the principle of equifinality, in which multiple workplace dimension configurations can lead to similar outcomes.Conclusion Emotional exhaustion among healthcare professionals is influenced by complex interactions among multiple workplace factors rather than a single factor. Our research findings also emphasize asymmetric causality, indicating that the pathways leading to high emotional exhaustion differ from those that prevent it. Effective intervention strategies and improvement plans should simultaneously target multiple workplace factors to reduce emotional exhaustion and enhance staff well-being.