From burnout to growth: how job burnout links to posttraumatic growth in healthcare workers

Healthcare workers face unprecedented psychological challenges due to relentless exposure to traumatic events, from global pandemics to workplace violence. Despite these adversities, some individuals experience posttraumatic growth (PTG)—a phenomenon where struggle leads to profound personal transformation. Given this concerning reality, understanding the current status and underlying mechanisms of PTG among healthcare workers becomes crucial. Drawing on a large-scale cross-sectional survey involving 1375 healthcare workers from two Chinese cities, this research examined the relationship between job burnout and PTG. Specifically, it explored how psychological resilience and positive stress beliefs serve as potential chain mediators in this relationship. The results demonstrated that job burnout was a negative predictor of PTG. Furthermore, both psychological resilience and positive stress beliefs were found to mediate the relationship between job burnout and PTG, with a significant sequential chain mediation effect observed. Job burnout was found to be associated not only with lower levels of PTG among healthcare workers, but also with reduced psychological resilience and less positive stress beliefs, which were related to lower PTG. This research enriched the theoretical understanding of posttraumatic growth among healthcare workers by revealing how job burnout diminished the likelihood of posttraumatic growth. Simultaneously, the research contributed a novel perspective to job burnout theory by highlighting its negative impact on individuals’ positive psychological transformation.