摘要：Positive psychology deals with factors that make life most worth living and focuses on enhancing individual potentials. Particularly character strengths can positively contribute to well-being and work-related health, bearing a promising potential for professions at risk for burnout or mental illnesses such as physicians. This study aims to identify beneficial character strengths examining quantitative and qualitative data. In a cross-sectional multi-method study, 218 hospital physicians completed an online survey assessing their character strengths and their general and work-related well-being, comprising thriving, work engagement, and burnout dimensions (outcome variables). Quantitative data were analyzed for the total sample and by tertiary split. Additionally, interview-gathered opinions of four resident physicians and four medical specialist educators were collected to expand the perspective on which character strengths might be beneficial for resident physicians’ well-being. The highest significant correlations between character strengths and outcome variables were found for hope and thriving (r = .67), zest and work engagement (r = .67) as well as emotional exhaustion (r = -.47), perseverance/leadership and depersonalization (r = -.27), bravery and reduced personal accomplishment (r = -.39). Tertiary splits revealed that some correlations were not consistent across the entire scale continuum, e.g., creativity was only significantly correlated with comparatively high levels of thriving (r = .28) or forgiveness only with comparatively high levels of depersonalization (r = -.34). Humility, social intelligence, and teamwork showed predominantly low correlations with all outcome variables (r = -.17 to .34) although humility was stated by all interviewed medical specialist educators to be most relevant for well-being at work, and the latter two by three resident physicians, respectively. Different perspectives resulting from quantitative and qualitative data in terms of beneficial character strengths for work-related well-being may be driven by different work experiences, professional understandings, generational beliefs, or social expectations. Some significant correlations between character strengths and well-being outcomes varied depending on low, medium, or high outcomes. This raises questions about suitable work-related well-being interventions, as simple single intervention approaches (one intervention fits all) may not work for the respective outcome levels. These new findings warrant further research how to foster resident physicians’ well-being at work.
关键词：mixed-methods; burnout; work engagement; Well-being; Character strengths; Hospital physicians; tertiary split
