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The Healthcare sector has gained immense popularity and importance recently amidst the crisis emerging from the outbreak of the COVID pandemic globally (Deloitte, 2021), necessitating the need for high-quality healthcare services. Healthcare professionals (nurses and doctors) have played a crucial role in the wellbeing of patients and the human community across the globe over many ages. The relentless services and care shown by healthcare professionals during tough times can be attributed to the nature of their job, moral values integrated with their job roles, personality traits, and commitment evolving from the psychological contract they develop with their organisation over time. Delivering high-quality services at the risk of one's own life in this challenging context mandates high levels of job commitment, competence, positive personality dimensions, and the undoubtedly more vital psychological contract.
The psychological contract is the non-verbal implicit relationship between an employer and employee encompassing unwritten mutual expectations from each side based on culture, language, and behavioural outcomes at the workplace (Mueller, 2009). It determines the level of commitment and ownership that an employee develops towards one's organisation based on the perception of fulfilling the expectations that one usually has from the organisation and vice-versa (Maia & Bastos, 2015). The solid psychological contract between the employee and employer bind them together with an implied, unwritten contract encompassing their mutual expectations and strengthened through commitment, mutual trust, respect, sense of ownership, and employee welfare (Rousseau et al., 2006). Healthcare management being aware, sensitive to nurse discourses, and controlling expectations through higher commitment supports favourable psychological contracts and commitment among nursing professionals. Managers sensitive to nursing discourses support favourable psychological contract and interaction among nursing professionals, controlling their aspirations through greater participation and leadership development (McCabe et al., 2013). Extant research has asserted the role of the psychological contract in determining employees' loyalty, commitment, and retention intention (De Vos et al., 2008) and their psychological wellbeing, which influences the excellence of patient care and dedicated services (Pahlevan Sharif et al., 2018). Because the demand for qualified medical workers surpasses the availability, doctors and nurses frequently have to choose between littering and working, resulting in shortages in some areas. The healthcare industry is flooded with retiring baby boomers, and there are not enough millennials graduating to fill the void. Psychological contract leads to higher retention decisions by the healthcare professionals by influencing their job attitude, commitment, and behavioural outcomes, while its breach leads to adverse outcomes like dissatisfaction and high turnover (Collins & Beauregard, 2020).
Empowering healthcare professionals to access, interpret and apply organisational expertise, patient care procedures best practices, and other skills confidently in a way that increases patient satisfaction by integrating IT, produces beneficial clinical results, maximises the organisation's cost savings, and increases the efficiency of healthcare staff. It has been found to enhance psychological contracts as well. According to Sims et al. (1994), a permanent psychological contract is needed for the continuous cordial relationship between the employee and the employer. During the COVID-19 outbreak, more than one-third of the medical personnel suffered from insomnia and various other psychological symptoms. The associated factors causing stress and insomnia include education, loneliness, fears about the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, and occupational hazards. To target different socio-psychological personal factors, interventions for curing insomnia among doctors and nurses are needed (Zhang et al. 2020).