Healthcare workers play a central role in sustaining effective healthcare systems, yet their job satisfaction and mental wellbeing remain unevenly understood in many settings. Existing research in Kuwait and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has largely relied on cross-sectional quantitative studies focused on single professional groups and negative outcomes such as burnout, limiting understanding of healthcare workers’ experiences of job satisfaction and wellbeing.
This study aimed to explore factors shaping job satisfaction and mental wellbeing among healthcare workers in Kuwait and to examine variation in these experiences across professional roles, nationality, and gender. The study was conducted at Mubarak Al-Kabeer Hospital in Kuwait and involved 20 healthcare workers from diverse professional backgrounds, nationalities, and genders.
This applied qualitative study adopted an interpretivist and contextualist approach. Data were generated through purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis was conducted inductively, with the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model subsequently used to support interpretation.
Leadership and management practices emerged as the most influential factors shaping participants’ job satisfaction and mental wellbeing. Participants described leadership instability due to frequent managerial turnover, authoritarian management styles, poor communication, and bureaucratic control driven by external pressures. Surveillance-oriented attendance systems were commonly experienced as signals of mistrust rather than support. Perceived inequities between Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti staff in recognition, promotion, and access to training further contributed to dissatisfaction. Gendered expectations and limited organisational flexibility intensified work-home spillover, exacerbating strain and undermining wellbeing within a highly hierarchical organisational context.
This thesis contributes by providing qualitative insight into the lived experiences of a multi-professional healthcare workforce in Kuwait and refining the JD-R model for this context. In particular, leadership is conceptualised as a multi-positional factor that can function as a demand, a resource, and a meta-moderator shaping how other workplace demands and resources are experienced.
