Rural healthcare leaders face significant workplace stressors that contribute to burnout. Understanding how these leaders derive meaningfulness from their work is critical to fostering well-being and facilitating positive work outcomes. We explored how rural healthcare leaders find meaning in their work and identified the workplace factors that contribute to or undermine their experiences of meaningfulness. We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with rural healthcare leaders to understand the factors contributing to healthcare leaders’ stress and burnout and what they believed could minimize workplace stressors. Interviews were one-on-one, recorded, transcribed, and deidentified prior to being inductively coded. Three rounds of inductive coding yielded a data structure depicting the first-order concepts, second-order themes, and aggregate dimensions that help explain participants’ experiences of meaningfulness at work. Our analysis revealed three broader dimensions related to healthcare leaders’ experiences of meaningfulness at work: relational fulfillment, work impact reinforcement, and strains on meaningfulness. Specifically, healthcare leaders' experiences of meaningful work were positively shaped by their relationships and impact with employees, patients, and the community, and negatively influenced by feeling unappreciated and organizational constraints. Our research identifies opportunities for organizations to foster healthcare leaders’ meaningfulness at work to allow leaders to feel valued and potentially reduce burnout.
