Relationships among social support, empathy, resilience and work engagement in haemodialysis nurses

AIM: To describe the levels of work engagement, and to analyse the reciprocal relationships between social support, empathy, resilience and work engagement among haemodialysis nurses in China. BACKGROUND: Work engagement is a critical workplace health indicator. Previous studies have examined work engagement perceived by nurses working in diverse hospital wards, or a specialty area (emergency care or intensive care), no previous studies have highlighted work engagement and its affecting factors among haemodialysis nurses. METHODS: Participants in the cross-sectional study were 345 haemodialysis nurses employed in 17 hospitals in Chengdu, China. Hierarchical regression analyses were carried out to analyse the relationships between social support, empathy, resilience and work engagement in haemodialysis nurses. RESULTS: Resilience was the strongest positive significant contributor to work engagement, followed by other support and perspective taking (cognitive empathy). Nurses with longer occupational tenure reported higher levels of work engagement. Male nurses also reported greater work engagement than female nurses. DISCUSSION: Influence of work engagement was explored by social support, empathy and resilience, reflecting the need of haemodialysis nurses to understand the significance of focusing on their personal and environmental factors. CONCLUSIONS: Positive resilience, other support and cognitive empathy can result in increased work engagement. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: Training programs, such as mindfulness meditation training and empathy skills training, are recommended for nursing managers to enhance resilience and empathic capacity in nurses. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING POLICY: Nursing policies should be developed to establish supportive work environments in clinical practice settings and to support the education and training of psychological resilience and empathic capacity in order to foster work engagement.