Work-related distress and professional quality of life in a medical-school workforce: a primary-care occupational-health perspective

Background Work-related distress may present in primary care through nonspecific physical, psychological, or functional complaints. This study assessed professional quality of life in a United Arab Emirates medical-school workforce through primary-care and occupational-health perspectives. Methods A cross-sectional electronic survey was conducted among employees of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates University, between October 2025 and February 2026. The sampling frame comprised 373 employees. Professional quality of life was assessed using the Professional Quality of Life Scale, Version 5. Descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, subgroup comparisons, correlations, and sensitivity analyses were performed. Results Of 373 eligible employees, 162 responded to the survey invitation, 140 were retained after consent confirmation, 109 reached the ProQOL section, and 108 had usable ProQOL subscale scores. Faculty members accounted for 56.9% of respondents and non-faculty employees for 43.1%. Mean scores were 38.88 (SD = 5.70) for compassion satisfaction, 22.35 (SD = 5.13) for burnout, and 23.67 (SD = 6.24) for secondary traumatic stress. Compassion satisfaction was mostly moderate or high, burnout was low or moderate, and secondary traumatic stress was mostly low or moderate. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.857, 0.747, and 0.838, respectively. No statistically significant differences were detected between faculty and non-faculty employees across ProQOL domains. Compassion satisfaction was strongly and negatively correlated with burnout ( r  = −0.620, p  r  = 0.535, p   Conclusion Professional meaning was generally preserved, but workload-related strain remained evident. The findings support attention in primary care to occupational context, functioning, recovery, and work-life boundaries. They also support coordinated consideration of workload and access to support by institutional leadership, human resources, and occupational-health services. These implications are hypothesis-generating because specific job demands, resources, and intervention effects were not measured.