Thriving in Healthcare: Boosting Health Perception, Resilience, and Professional Quality of Life in Medical Social Workers.

This article focuses on the professional quality of life (ProQOL), resilience, and perceived health among medical social workers in mainland China, a field still in early development with structural challenges affecting practitioners. A survey of 319 medical social workers identified three ProQOL clusters—career satisfied, trauma thriving, and compassion fatigue—with the career satisfied group showing significantly higher perceived health and resilience scores than the other groups. The study found that factors such as age, gender, marital status, education level, and years of employment are associated with variations in perceived health, resilience, and ProQOL dimensions, highlighting that burnout and secondary traumatic stress negatively impact health, while resilience serves as a protective factor. The findings suggest the need for targeted interventions and resilience-building programs to improve the well-being and professional quality of life of medical social workers in China.