Healing leaders: Altruism and psychological safety as antidotes to burnout in health care settings

Employee burnout is an issue of relevance to several of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. We investigated servant leadership, psychological safety, and employee altruism as important factors for predicting burnout in the Chinese health care sector. A three-phase questionnaire was administered to 412 health care professionals and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Servant leadership was found to positively predict psychological safety. In addition, servant leadership interacted with employee altruism to significantly predict burnout via the mediating variable of psychological safety. These outcomes indicate that servant leadership and a protective, caring organizational climate can be helpful in preventing burnout among health care workers. This has implications for academic research and gives rise to practical recommendations for health care leaders, in line with the aim of having a resilient and sustainable health care system by 2030.