ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1632053
This article is part of the Research TopicEnsuring Public Health: The Active Role of Healthcare ProfessionalsView all 21 articles
Resilience and Professional Identity Among Young Healthcare Workers in a Shanghai Megahospital During COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Study
Provisionally accepted
- Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background Public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic place immense psychological and professional pressure on healthcare workers, particularly those early in their careers. While much research has focused on burnout and stress, fewer studies have examined the role of professional identity and its organizational determinants among actively employed young healthcare professionals. Methods This cross-sectional study surveyed 326 young healthcare workers (≤40 years old) across clinical, research, and administrative roles in a megahospital in Shanghai, China. A validated multidimensional scale was used to assess professional identity. Independent variables included job satisfaction, workload, exposure to high-risk duties, and perceived organizational support (including satisfaction with humanistic care and working conditions). Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis H tests, and multivariate linear regression were employed. Results The majority of respondents (92.9%) reported a high level of professional identity (median score: 81, IQR: 13). Satisfaction with humanistic care (B = 3.431, P = 0.009) and working conditions (B = 3.679, P = 0.003) were strong predictors of higher professional identity scores. Significant differences in professional identity were observed based on gender, income satisfaction, and exposure to COVID-19 patients. Conclusion This study highlights the essential role of organizational resources—particularly perceived humanistic care and adequate working conditions—in sustaining professional identity among young healthcare professionals during public health emergencies. The findings underscore the need for system-level interventions that support resilience and workforce stability. These insights may inform global strategies for healthcare human resource management in high-pressure contexts.
Keywords: professional identity, Young Healthcare Workers, Humanistic care, Working conditions, organizational resources, Public health emergency, COVID-19
Received: 20 May 2025; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu, Zhou, Yan, Ye, Yuchun, Wang and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Di Xu, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Ying Zhou, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.