Reconceptualising Psychological Well-Being as A Catalyst for Health Workforce De-velopment, Organisational Resilience, And Sustainable Health Systems: A Theory-Building Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: The study views Psychological Well-being (PWB) as the capability of an organization that can be built into a system beyond the mental health of the individuals. As a result, PWB would act as a driver/motivator for the development of health work and services, as well as the development of organizational capability, flexibility, and the establishment of health systems that can be sustained over time. Most bibliometric studies are content-driven and analyze the trends in publications and the thematic clusters of published studies. Contrary to that, the objective of this study is to construct the intellectual steps of PWB studies from a theory perspective and to construct an integrated theory to place psychological well-being at the starting point of building post-capacity health care organizations. This study analyzes the development of a resilient workforce and flexible organization, as well as sustainable health systems, based on psychological well-being.
Design/methodology/approach: The study advocates theory building through bibliometric studies. The target population of the bibliometric study included publications from the years 2020 to 2025. A total of 3,813 publications were sampled. Publications were obtained from Scopus sub-databases through a bibliometric study with a particular focus on psychological well-being and general health-related studies. Data and meta-data were processed with Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer. A literature study was conducted for the analysis of the growth of publications, key authors, key journals, key institutions, key countries, key sponsors, citation structures, and research collaboration networks. Co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation analysis were also employed to study the emerging research domains.
Findings: Between 2020 and 2025, there was a marked increase in research studies on the psychological component of well-being, likely due to increased awareness of the element’s significance within healthcare systems. The United States, China, the United Kingdom, India and Turkey were the most prominent countries, and the National Institutes of Health, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the National Institute on Aging were active research funding agencies. Network studies indicated that research communities were beginning to cover the concepts of mental health, resilience, burnout, and healthcare workers, as well as the quality of life, well-being, and sustainability in the workplace and organizations. The bibliographic coupling and co-citation analyses illustrated that the research was beginning to include a variety of concepts beyond clinical and psychological, including organizational behavior, workforce management, public health, and healthcare management and health policy. With the knowledge from the various domains, this study attempts to define psychological well-being as a mental state of resilience and strength that empowers a flexible and sustainable health system.
Originality/value: This study adds to the understanding of psychological well-being by placing it as a strategic capability for healthcare systems, moving away from limited individual constructs. Integrative theory-building bibliometrics is rare. Typically, bibliometrics describe patterns of research and publications. This study creates an explanatory theory-building bibliometrics model for the interrelationship of psychological well-being, health workforce development, organizational resilience, and sustainable health systems. The model demonstrates the relationship of psychological well-being to resilient healthcare systems and sustainable systems in the context of the foundational capability. The study provides healthcare leaders and policymakers practical ways to incorporate employee well-being into workforce planning, organizational resilience, and health system sustainability. The findings build a robust theoretical basis for the future empirical study of the psychological well-being of employees in the healthcare system in the determination of sustainable and resilient system integration.