Table 1
Themes organized by participant time in the field
| Theme | Total Responses | Early Career Responses | Advanced Career Responses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feeling stress in the clinic | n=9/21 | n=7/11 | n=2/10 |
| Patients don’t ask about the meaning of suffering | n=8/21 | n=6/11 | n=2/10 |
| Sabbath and family time as work/life boundaries | n=10/21 | n=7/11 | n=3/10 |
| Personal confrontation of ethical conflicts regarding patient care | n=4/21 | n=4/11 | n=0/10 |
| Authoritarian leadership conflicts | n=10/21 | n=4/11 | n=6/10 |
[i] Note. Of the twenty-one participants, eleven are considered early career and ten are considered advanced career. The proportion of participants who expressed interview content relating to each theme is denoted with the (n=21) proportion. Each theme is further organized by responses of early career participants (n=11) and advanced career participants (n=10).
Table 2
Insights from Themes
| Insight & Topic | Theme Explanation |
|---|---|
| 1 - Stress | Less experienced healthcare missionaries appear more likely to feel stressed from personal responsibility/capability for care than more experienced practitioners. Language barriers were a focal stress element. |
| 2 - Explanation for Suffering | Both ranges of missionaries reflected never having patients ask about the reason for suffering and noted the interview question might be too westernized and thus difficult for other cultures to consider. There was also unity in recognizing fatalism in the field. |
| 3 - Work/Life Boundaries | Less experienced healthcare missionaries appear more likely to personally react or have a spouse/ family react to a lack of boundaries rather than enact preventative boundaries (Despite having ideas on which boundaries would work). |
| 4 - Ethical Conflicts with Patient Care | Early career healthcare missionaries may be slightly more likely than advanced career healthcare missionaries to personally confront unresolved ethical conflicts related to patient care. |
| 5 - Expatriate Leadership | Practitioners from both ranges of field experience noted having conflict with authoritarian leadership dynamics specifically with expatriate, rather than national leaders. Advanced practitioners expressed this dynamic more frequently than early career practitioners. Further, both ranges reflect tension from overly hierarchical leadership structures that feel disconnected/disjointed from the ground practitioners. |
[i] Note. Five insights organized by topic and content. The insight explanations result from theme analysis of the participant’s years of field experience and key informant quotes.