Relationships between resilience, empathy, compassion fatigue, work engagement and turnover intention in...

To explore the relationships between resilience, empathy, compassion fatigue, work engagement and turnover intention in Chinese haemodialysis nurses.

Although several studies explored nurses' turnover intention in multiple hospital wards, fewer studies focused on turnover intention and its predictors among nurses in dialysis care.

We conducted a cross-sectional study and adopted a two-stage sampling method to recruit 528 Chinese haemodialysis nurses. Multiple regression analysis was performed to explore the effects of resilience, empathy, compassion fatigue and work engagement on turnover intention.

The prevalence of high and exceptionally high levels of turnover intention was 59.1% and 9.0%. Compassion fatigue had the strongest significant effect on turnover intention (β = 0.276), followed by work engagement (β = -0.256) and resilience (β = 0.193). Haemodialysis nurses in tertiary hospitals reported significant higher levels of turnover intention than those in secondary hospitals (β = 0.127).

Higher levels of compassion fatigue and lower levels of resilience and work engagement can result in higher turnover intention in haemodialysis nurses.

Strategies such as resilience training programme, mindfulness-based intervention and establishing a positive work environment may be effective methods to improve resilience, reduce compassion fatigue, promote work engagement and decrease turnover intention.