Accepting career uncertainty tied to more meaningful work

Clinical takeaway: Comfort with career uncertainty appears to be a learnable skill, not a fixed trait. For clinicians navigating an unpredictable work environment building that up may support engagement and meaning at work.

Healthcare careers rarely unfold as planned. Residency matches, shifting reimbursement, consolidation, and burnout push clinicians into decisions with no clearly right answer. Career guidance has long assumed the fix is more information and better planning. But a new study suggests a different resource matters: the capacity to comfortably move ahead even in the absence of complete information.

The researchers call the resource "career wisdom": gathering what information you can, accepting that some uncertainty will remain, trusting intuition, and tolerating the discomfort of choosing. Unlike ambiguity tolerance, generally treated as a stable personality trait, career wisdom is framed as trainable through education and counseling. If the skill can be built, it becomes a target for mentorship, career development programs, and support for trainees at decision points.

Workers who scored higher on career wisdom at baseline reported greater work meaningfulness three months later, and that meaning in turn tracked with higher job satisfaction and work engagement at six months. The design controlled for where people started on each outcome, so the findings reflect change over time, not just who was already satisfied. The pathway ran through meaning: career wisdom showed no direct link to later job satisfaction once meaningfulness was accounted for.

Researchers tracked 995 US workers over six months, measuring career wisdom at baseline, work meaningfulness at three months, and satisfaction and engagement at six. All measures were self-reported, participants were recruited online, and the sample spanned general occupations rather than healthcare. About half completed the final wave, though the sample's demographic makeup held steady across waves.

"Many people feel pressure to find the perfect job or make the perfect career choice," said lead author Hui Xu, PhD, of the University of Macau. "Our findings suggest a different possibility: meaningful work may come not only from finding the ideal path, but also from learning how to live with uncertainty, make thoughtful trade-offs and build a sense of meaning within imperfect circumstances."

Source: Xu H, et al (2026 Jul 23) J Couns Psychol. Facilitating Meaningful Work: How Career Wisdom Relates to Well-Being