Can patient gratitude compensate for depletion from family-to-work conflict in nurses? An experience sampling study
ISSN: 0048-3486
Article publication date: 15 August 2022
Issue publication date: 9 November 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Nurses' work engagement is critical for the service quality of the hospital. Thus, investigation on the influencing factors of nurses' work engagement has become an important issue. This study addresses this issue by exploring the effect of daily family-to-work conflict (FWC) on next-day work engagement among Chinese nurses.
Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical model was tested using 555 experience sampling data from 61 nurses collected for 10 workdays in China.
Findings
Nurses' daily FWC is associated with their next-day ego depletion. Moreover, increased ego depletion ultimately reduces their next-day work engagement. In addition, a between-individual factor of frequency of perceived patient gratitude mitigates the effect of FWC on ego depletion and the indirect effect on work engagement via ego depletion.
Originality/value
This study is important to the management of health-care organizations as it carries significant implications for theory and practice toward understanding the influence of FWC among nurses. On the one hand, the authors apply the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as the overarching theoretical framework, which contributes to the authors’ understanding of how FWC impairs work engagement. On the other hand, the authors extend extant theoretical models of FWC by identifying the frequency of perceived patient gratitude as an important contextual factor that counteracts the negative effects of FWC among nurses. Moreover, organizations could encourage patients to express their gratitude to nurses by providing more channels, such as thank-you notes, to offer nurses some support for overcoming the destructive effect of FWC.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge and thank all the nurses who participated in the study.
Research fund: This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Numbers: 72002113; 72072002; 71662013).
Conflict of interest statement: All authors declare no conflict of interest.
Authors’ Note: All authors contributed equally to this paper.
The authors would like to acknowledge the funding support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72002113, 72072002), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (ZK1023) and Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Project (21YJA630112).
Citation
Zhan, X., Yang, W., Guo, Y. and Luo, W. (2023), "Can patient gratitude compensate for depletion from family-to-work conflict in nurses? An experience sampling study", Personnel Review, Vol. 52 No. 9, pp. 2153-2171. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-12-2020-0891
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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