Beyond technology usefulness: Health system reliability, and socio-demographic and professional factors as shapers of technostress in physicians

Healthcare digitalisation may improve care yet can undermine clinicians' wellbeing through technostress. We conducted a cross-sectional online survey of physicians in Catalonia, Spain (March-April 2024; n = 423) using the Technostress Creators Scale to quantify overall technostress and five techno-stressors (overload, invasion, complexity, insecurity and uncertainty). Hierarchical regression with bootstrapped standard errors assessed incremental contributions of demographics, digital experience and use, and contextual factors. Overall technostress was moderate (2.91 ± 0.59/5); techno-overload (3.37 ± 0.82) and techno-uncertainty (3.29 ± 0.74) were highest, while techno-insecurity was lowest (2.15 ± 0.74). Across models, greater professional experience and the interaction between gender (women), hospital care, and location in non-metropolitan areas were significant predictors. A higher probability was also detected in tasks where technology is more prevalent in healthcare, patients also have access to it and are pressured to use it, and where technical problems are frequent. Finally, moderators related to the digital maturity of professionals and better access to, and usability of digital tools were identified. These findings should be interpreted as exploratory associations, given the non-probabilistic convenience sample and the cross-sectional design, which preclude claims about population representativeness, response rate estimation, or causal inference. Nevertheless, the results suggest that promoting physicians' digital wellbeing requires attention to sociodemographic, professional, and technological factors associated with higher technostress.