Promoting patient care: work engagement as a mediator between ward service climate and patient-centred care

To test a model that suggests the ward's climate of service facilitates nurses' patient-centred care behaviours through its effect on nurses' work engagement.

Organizational efforts to promote patient-centred care focused on interventions aimed to improve nurses' communication skills, or to improve patient's participation in the decision-making process. These interventions have been only partially successful, as they do not take the ward context into account; so caring professionals who attend workshops can rarely apply their newly acquired skills due to the daily pressures of the ward.

A nested cross-sectional research design (nursing staff within wards) was adopted, with three measures of the care behaviour of nurses. Data were collected in 2009, from 158 nurses working in 40 wards of retirement homes in northern Israel. Nurses' work engagement, ward's climate for service and control variables were measured via validated questionnaires. Patient-centred care behaviours were assessed by structured observations.

The findings supported our model: service climate proved a link to nurses' work engagement and patient-centred care behaviours. Nurses' work engagement mediated the service-climate patient-centred care behaviours.

The research is pioneering in demonstrating a close relation between ward service climate and patient-centred care. In practice, to improve patient-centred care managers should invest in facilitating ward service climate, highlighting the importance of service to the organization through appropriate rewards, guidance and administrative practices.