Abstract
Introduction
Work-life balance represents a critical factor influencing healthcare professionals’ well-being, performance and quality of patient care. The healthcare sector presents unique challenges to achieving this balance due to irregular schedules, high-stress environments and emotional labour. Despite its importance, there is no consensus on how to measure work-life balance in healthcare contexts, with various instruments employing different theoretical frameworks and dimensional structures. This scoping review aims to identify and characterise validated instruments used to measure work-life balance among healthcare professionals and examine the domains/dimensions these instruments measure.
Methods and analysis
The review will include studies that employ quantitative, qualitative or mixed-method assessment instruments designed to evaluate work-life balance constructs (including work-family conflict, work-home interference and professional-personal life integration) among healthcare professionals across all healthcare delivery settings. Studies published between 1980 and 2025 with no language restrictions and languages other than English will be translated using artificial intelligence software DeepL. This review will follow Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology. A comprehensive three-phase search strategy will be implemented across multiple databases including CINAHL, MEDLINE, Global Health, Scopus, Cochrane Library and Web of Science Core Collection. Grey literature will be searched via the WHO website, ProQuest and Google Scholar. After duplicate removal, three independent reviewers will screen titles, abstracts and full texts. Data extraction will capture detailed information about each measurement instrument, including psychometric properties, domains measured and applications in healthcare contexts. Findings will be presented using comparative tables and narrative synthesis to illustrate instrument characteristics, strengths, limitations and profession-specific applications.
Ethics and dissemination
Patients and the public were not involved in the design, conduct, reporting or dissemination plans of this scoping review. As this study is a scoping review that will synthesise data from publicly available published literature, specific ethical approval is not required. The results will be presented in articles to be submitted to scientific journals and may also be presented at scientific conferences and to public policy makers.
PROSPERO registration number
Open science framework: https://osf.io/b3eyf.
Keywords: Risk Assessment, Health Personnel, Epidemiologic Measurements
WHAT IS ALREADY KNOWN ON THIS TOPIC.
WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS
First comprehensive mapping of validated work-life balance instruments used in healthcare professional populations. Systematic characterisation of psychometric properties and domains measured across different healthcare contexts.
HOW THIS STUDY MIGHT AFFECT RESEARCH, PRACTICE OR POLICY
Provides researchers with evidence-based guidance for instrument selection, promoting standardisation in healthcare workforce studies.
Enables healthcare organisations and policymakers to implement validated measurement approaches for evaluating workplace interventions.
Introduction
The concept of work-life balance emerged during the late 1970s and 1980s in Western societies, representing the idea of allocating equal priority between professional pursuits and personal dimensions of life. This construct encompasses more than just equal time division—it reflects individuals’ strategic efforts to effectively manage their resources across both professional responsibilities and personal fulfilment. For healthcare professionals specifically, this balance represents a critical factor influencing not only personal well-being but also professional performance and patient care quality. The healthcare sector presents unique challenges to achieving work-life balance due to its demanding nature—characterised by irregular schedules, high-stress environments, emotional labour and often unavoidable intrusions of work into personal time. Understanding how this balance is measured among healthcare workers is therefore essential for developing evidence-based interventions and organisational policies that support sustainable careers and personal well-being in healthcare settings.1,5
Healthcare represents one of the most challenging sectors worldwide, facing mounting pressures from demographic shifts and changing disease patterns that drive increasing service requirements. Meeting these demands requires a competent workforce functioning in settings marked by heavy workloads, long shifts, persistent understaffing and inflexible schedules. These stressful conditions often disrupt the equilibrium between work duties and personal life, causing harm at individual, family and institutional levels. Work-life balance—defined as achieving equilibrium between professional obligations and personal life to enhance overall life satisfaction—involves maintaining healthy relationships between career demands and lifestyle choices while equally attending to physical, mental and emotional well-being in both domains. Individual characteristics—including personal values, stress management approaches and views on professional role—shape this equilibrium differently, with some workers seeing their jobs as task completion while others find deep purpose in their careers. Poor work-life balance in healthcare environments produces serious consequences: psychological strain, declining health, reduced self-assurance, more medical mistakes, interpersonal tensions and decreased efficiency, ultimately compromising both work performance and personal well-being.6,9
Research consistently demonstrates strong correlations between poor work-life balance among healthcare workers and diminished quality of patient care, reduced patient satisfaction and unfavourable clinical outcomes.10,14 The spillover effect into family life proves equally concerning, with healthcare professionals experiencing decreased family involvement, energy depletion affecting parenting capabilities and work priorities frequently superseding family needs.11 Contributing factors include excessive workload expectations, rigid scheduling, intense performance pressure and inadequate organisational support. These challenges affect healthcare workers disproportionately compared with other professionals due to their unique combination of high emotional demands, irregular scheduling and life-critical responsibilities. Despite these challenges, research15 16 also identifies potential positive reciprocal influences between work and family domains when properly balanced, highlighting the importance of developing effective measurement instruments and targeted interventions to help healthcare professionals achieve sustainable equilibrium between their professional contributions and personal well-being.
The measurement of work-life balance varies significantly across different professional sectors, with complexity evident in healthcare environments. Healthcare professionals face unique challenges—including irregular schedules, high emotional demands and life-or-death responsibilities—that necessitate specialised assessment approaches. No single definition or unified consensus exists for measuring work-life balance in the literature. Instead, researchers have developed multiple conceptual frameworks, each emphasising different aspects: distribution across multiple roles, equity between professional and personal domains, satisfaction within various life spheres, fulfilment of prioritised roles, the interplay between conflict and facilitation and perceived control over role boundaries.17 This methodological heterogeneity hampers cross-context comparisons, intervention evaluation and evidence-based workplace improvement efforts across healthcare institutions, systems and countries.
A comprehensive mapping of existing measurement instruments specifically used in healthcare contexts is therefore essential to advance both research and practical applications in this critical domain. Such mapping will offer a thorough examination of available resources and illuminate existing sources of evidence while identifying potential knowledge gaps that future research projects could address. A preliminary search was conducted in Open Science Framework, Cochrane Library and Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Evidence Synthesis to identify any existing or ongoing reviews on this topic, and no comparable reviews were found. A scoping review methodology was chosen to explore this research question due to the limited available data on work-life balance measurement tools specifically used with healthcare professionals, particularly in diverse global contexts. This approach will enable initial mapping of the existing evidence base, identification of key concepts and types of measurement instruments available, and examination of how research in this area has been conducted. This scoping review aims to identify and characterise validated instruments used to measure work-life balance among healthcare professionals and examine the domains/dimensions these instruments measure.
Methods and analysis
The proposed review will be carried out according to the JBI scoping review methodology authored by Peters and colleagues18 and will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR)19 (online supplemental file 1). The review is prospectively registered in Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/b3eyf.
Review question
What validated instruments exist to measure work-life balance in healthcare professionals?
What domains/dimensions of work-life balance do these instruments measure?
Search strategy
A 3-phase search strategy will be employed to locate both published and unpublished papers. An initial limited search of MEDLINE (Ovid) was undertaken to identify articles related to the topic. In the second phase, the keywords contained in the titles and abstracts of the relevant articles, and the index terms used to describe them, were used to develop a full search strategy for the different databases to be searched (table 1). This search strategy, including all identified keywords and index terms, will be adapted for each included database and/or information source. In the third phase, the reference lists of all included sources of evidence will be screened for additional studies. The reviewers also intend to consult authors of primary studies or reviews for further information, where relevant. All research published from the year 1980 to 2025 will be included to capture the complete evolution of work-life balance measurement instruments from the concept’s initial emergence through to contemporary assessment methods.
Table 1. Search strategy.
| Search statement | Search terms | Results retrieved |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | “Health Personnel”(MeSH Terms) OR “Medical Staff”(MeSH Terms) OR “medical professional*“(Title/Abstract) OR “doctor*“(Title/Abstract) OR “clinician*“(Title/Abstract) OR “nurse practitioner*“(Title/Abstract) OR “healthcare provider*“(Title/Abstract) OR “healthcare provider*“(Title/Abstract) OR “allied health professional*“(Title/Abstract) OR “medical resident*“(Title/Abstract) OR “healthcare worker*“(Title/Abstract) OR “Medical Staff”(Title/Abstract) OR “hospital staff”(Title/Abstract) OR “specialist*“(Title/Abstract) OR “consultant*“(Title/Abstract) OR “surgeon*“(Title/Abstract) OR “medical specialist*"(Title/Abstract) | 158, 122 |
| 2 | “work-life balance”(tiab) OR “work life balance”(tiab) OR “work-family balance”(tiab) OR “work family balance”(tiab) OR “work-home balance”(tiab) OR “work home balance”(tiab) OR “work-life conflict”(tiab) OR “work-life conflict”(tiab) OR “work-family conflict”(tiab) OR “work family conflict”(tiab) OR “work-home conflict”(tiab) OR “work home conflict”(tiab) OR “work-life interface”(tiab) OR “work family interface”(tiab) OR “work-family interaction”(tiab) OR “work family interaction”(tiab) OR “work-home interaction”(tiab) OR “work home interaction”(tiab) OR “work-life interference”(tiab) OR “work family interference”(tiab) OR “work-home interference”(tiab) OR “work-life integration”(tiab) OR “work family integration”(tiab) OR “work-home integration”(tiab) | 44 001 |
| 3 | “questionnaire*“(tiab) OR “survey*“(tiab) OR “instrument*“(tiab) OR “scale*“(tiab) OR “tool*“(tiab) OR “measure*“(tiab) OR “assessment*“(tiab) OR “inventory”(tiab) OR “inventories”(tiab) OR “index”(tiab) OR “indices”(tiab) OR “psychometric*“(tiab) OR “validation”(tiab) OR “validity”(tiab) OR “reliability”(tiab) OR “factor analysis”(tiab) OR “confirmatory factor analysis”(tiab) OR “exploratory factor analysis”(tiab) OR “measurement”(tiab) OR “evaluation”(tiab) OR “appraisal”(tiab) OR “profile”(tiab) OR “scoring”(tiab) OR “indicator*"(tiab) | 103 279 |
| 4 | #1 AND #2 AND #3 | 3779 |
The following databases will be searched: CINAHL (EBSCOhost), MEDLINE (Ovid), Global Health (Ovid), Scopus, Cochrane Library, Web of Science Core Collection. The following sources of grey literature will be searched: the WHO website, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses and Google Scholar.
Inclusion criteria
Participants
This scoping review will include studies that explicitly incorporate measurement approaches for work-life balance among healthcare professionals. The review will encompass studies involving any category of healthcare professionals—including physicians, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, dentists, allied health practitioners, hospital administrators and support staff.
Concept
The review will encompass various conceptualisations of this multifaceted construct, including work-life balance, work-life conflict, work-family conflict, work-home interference, professional-personal life integration, work-family interface and work-nonwork boundaries. These conceptualisations typically encompass several core domains: time-based dimensions (managing temporal demands between work and personal life), strain-based dimensions (psychological and physical fatigue affecting both spheres) and behaviour-based dimensions (role expectations and behaviours conflicting across domains). Additionally, bidirectional interference patterns are recognised, including work-to-family interference and family-to-work interference, alongside positive constructs, such as role satisfaction, perceived control and work-life enrichment. Core measurement dimensions identified in the literature—such as time-based conflict, strain-based conflict, behaviour-based conflict, work-to-family interference, family-to-work interference, role satisfaction and perceived control—will guide which evidence on assessment instruments to include in this review. Additionally, the psychometric properties (including reliability and validity evidence), number of items/questions, domains or dimensions measured, response format, scoring methodology, target healthcare professional populations and healthcare settings where the instruments have been applied will be reviewed.
Context
The geographical context for this study is worldwide, with no regional restrictions, and therefore evidence from across the globe will be eligible for inclusion if it meets all the other inclusion criteria. The spectrum of healthcare delivery settings, including from hospitals, primary care facilities, long-term care institutions, community health centres and academic medical centres, will be considered. Studies conducted on students within these healthcare specialities will be excluded.
Types of studies
Eligible studies must employ quantitative, qualitative or mixed-method assessment instruments designed to evaluate work-life balance constructs (including work-family conflict, work-home interference, professional-personal life integration or related concepts) within healthcare worker populations. We will include all ranges of study designs from quantitative, qualitative, systematic reviews and meta-analyses etc to capture the diverse applications of these measurement tools across healthcare contexts. Studies employing exclusively qualitative methodologies without standardised measurement tools will fall outside the scope of this review.
Study/source of evidence selection
Following the search, all identified citations will be collated and uploaded into (Zotero V.6.0.36 Windows V.10, https://www.zotero.org/) and duplicates removed. Following a pilot test, titles and abstracts will then be screened by three independent reviewers for assessment against the inclusion criteria for the review. Potentially relevant sources will be retrieved in full and their citation details imported into the Rayyan/JBI System for the Unified Management, Assessment and Review of Information (JBI SUMARI) (JBI, Adelaide, Australia).20 The full text of selected citations will be assessed in detail against the inclusion criteria by three independent reviewers. Reasons for exclusion of sources of evidence at full text that do not meet the inclusion criteria will be recorded and reported in the scoping review. Any disagreements that arise between the reviewers at each stage of the selection process will be resolved through discussion, or with an additional reviewer. The results of the search and the study inclusion process will be reported in full in the final scoping review and presented in a PRISMA flow diagram.21
Data extraction
Data will be extracted (starting from December 2025 to May 2026) from papers included in the scoping review by three independent reviewers using a data extraction tool specifically developed to address our research objectives regarding work-life balance measurement instruments in healthcare professionals. The data extraction tool (table 2) will capture specific details about each measurement instrument, including: author(s) of the instrument, year of development/validation, complete name of the measurement tool, psychometric properties (reliability and validity evidence), number of items/questions, domains or dimensions measured, response format, scoring methodology, target healthcare professional population(s), healthcare settings where applied and key findings regarding the instrument’s utility in healthcare contexts.
Table 2. Data extraction instrument.
| Study identification | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citation | Year of publication | Country | Study design | |
| Instrument characteristics | ||||
| Name | Original author | Target factor | Any framework | |
| Structure of instrument | ||||
| Number of items | Response format | Domains identified | Scoring method | Administration method |
| Health care aspects | ||||
| Target population | Sample size | Key findings | Limitations faced | |
The draft data extraction tool will be modified and revised as necessary during the process of extracting data from each included evidence source to ensure comprehensive capture of relevant information about work-life balance measurement approaches. Modifications to the extraction tool will be thoroughly documented and detailed in the final scoping review. Any disagreements that arise between the reviewers during the extraction process will be resolved through discussion or, when necessary, with input from an additional reviewer. If required information appears incomplete in the published materials, authors of papers will be contacted to request missing or additional data about the measurement instruments, particularly regarding their application in healthcare professional populations.
Data analysis and presentation
Tables and figures will be used to present the data and illustrate the key findings of this scoping review on work-life balance measurement instruments for healthcare professionals. The identified measurement tools will be systematically categorised according to their theoretical foundations, dimensional structure and primary measurement constructs (eg, work-life conflict, work-family facilitation, boundary management, role satisfaction). Comparative tables will present instrument characteristics including psychometric properties, number of items, response formats and scoring mechanisms to facilitate side-by-side assessment.
The tabulated data will be accompanied by a narrative synthesis addressing each major measurement domain, highlighting instrument strengths, limitations and applications in various healthcare contexts. Profession-specific analysis will examine how measurement approaches vary across different healthcare disciplines (physicians, nurses, allied health professionals), with particular attention to unique work-life challenges in each field.
Patient and public involvement statement
None. Patients and the public were not involved in the design, conduct, reporting or dissemination plans of this scoping review.
Ethics approval and dissemination
As this study is a scoping review that will synthesise data from publicly available published literature, specific ethical approval is not required. The review will not involve human participants or primary data collection. Study selection and data extraction will be conducted independently by three trained researchers using standardised forms and managed through the Rayyan and JBI SUMARI platforms. Disagreements at both screening and full-text review stages will be resolved through discussion among the three reviewers or by consulting additional independent reviewers. The results of this scoping review will be presented in articles to be submitted to peer-reviewed scientific journals and will be reported according to PRISMA-ScR guidelines.
Supplementary material
Footnotes
Funding: The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Patient consent for publication: Not applicable.
Ethics approval: Not applicable.
Data availability free text: All supporting data, including complete search strategies, list of included and excluded studies with reasons, and data extraction templates, will be made available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Patient and public involvement: Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.
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Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.
Supplementary Materials
Data Availability Statement
Data are available upon reasonable request.