Quiet Quitting in Healthcare: A Conceptual Examination of Disengagement in High-Demand Professions
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https://doi.org/10.65166/sn3w3834关键词:
quiet quitting, healthcare workforce disengagement, job demands–resources theory, moral distress, healthcare organizational performance, workforce sustainability摘要
Quiet quitting—intentional minimum-effort compliance without formal resignation—has been increasingly documented across occupational settings, yet its specific manifestation among healthcare professionals in high-demand, resource-constrained work environments remains conceptually underdeveloped. This paper addresses that gap by developing an integrative conceptual account of quiet quitting as a structurally induced disengagement pattern in healthcare professions, distinct from burnout, turnover intention, and organizational cynicism. Drawing on literature spanning the definitional architecture of quiet quitting, Job Demands–Resources theory, healthcare-specific structural antecedents such as understaffing and moral distress, and documented consequences of workforce disengagement for organizational performance and care delivery, the paper argues that quiet quitting is better understood as a deliberate, bounded calibration response to sustained imbalance between occupational demands and organizational resources than as an individual motivational deficit. From this synthesis, the paper develops a four-stage Demand–Resource Calibration Pathway—structural exposure, appraisal and calibration, behavioral manifestation, and organizational consequence—and advances three conceptual propositions concerning the chronicity of demand–resource imbalance, the agency-contingent divergence between calibration-based and exhaustion-based disengagement, and the earlier-signal function of quiet quitting relative to conventional turnover and burnout metrics. The framework carries implications for healthcare organizational practice, suggesting that discretionary-effort indicators may offer earlier and more actionable evidence of workforce strain than exit or exhaustion-based measures alone, and that structural remediation of staffing and workload conditions is likely to be more effective than individual-focused engagement interventions in isolation. The propositions advanced remain conceptual and are offered as a basis for future empirical validation rather than as confirmed findings.
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