Staff Perspectives on Workplace Well‐Being in Dental Schools: Challenges and Solutions

BACKGROUND: The importance of mental health awareness in the workplace has been widely recognised. The demands of the modern working environment can leave employees feeling overwhelmed and stressed, and unsurprisingly, staff in academia are also not immune to these. While their mental health and well-being are vital for their profession, this can also impact the students and non-academic staff in the educational workplace. The aim of this study was to investigate the perceptions of dental school staff and how their workplace environment could contribute to employee well-being. METHODS: An online survey was sent out to explore mental health issues of staff in dental schools. The qualitative data from open responses were open-coded and categorised adopting principles of content analysis. Thematic analyses were developed through an inductive method to identify key themes. RESULTS: 173 respondents with a total of 420 open text responses were returned. From these, three main domains were identified: support, communication and work environment. Within these, a total of 11 themes and 28 subthemes were identified. While work culture (n = 116) and supportive environment (n = 106) were the largest themes that have been recognised, the workload (n = 83), work-life balance (n = 49) and enhanced communication (n = 43) were also notable. CONCLUSION: Dental school staff identified a variety of challenges to their workplace well-being. Empowering practices to improve staff well-being experience need to be considered and implemented in each individual organisation.