Connecting organisational culture and quality of care in the hospital: is job burnout the missing link?

PURPOSE: To date, relatively little evidence has been published as to what represents an effective and efficient way to improve quality of care and safety in hospitals. In addition, the initiatives that do exist are rarely designed or developed with regard to the individual and organisational factors that determine the success or failure of such initiatives. One of the challenges in linking organisational culture to quality of care is to identify the focal point at which a deficient hospital culture and inadequate organisational resources are most evident. The accumulated evidence suggests that such a point is physician burnout. This paper sets out to examine this issue. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The paper reviews the existing literature on organisational culture, burnout and quality of care in the healthcare sector. A new conceptual approach as to how organisational culture and quality of care can be more effectively linked through the physician experience of burnout is proposed. FINDINGS: Recommendations are provided with regard to how future research can approach quality of care from a bottom-up organisational change perspective. In addition, the need to widen the debate beyond US and North European experiences is discussed. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The present paper represents an attempt to link organisational culture, job burnout and quality of care in a more meaningful way. A conceptual model has been provided as a way to frame and evaluate future research.