Empathy-Driven Humanization: Employment Instability, Burnout, and Work Engagement Among Temporary Nurses in a...

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Organizational Psychology
• Healthcare Management

Background:

• Employment instability is an emerging organizational stressor impacting healthcare professionals.
• The combined effects of contract instability on nurse burnout, humanized care, and work engagement require further quantification.
• Understanding these relationships is crucial for improving the nursing work environment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationships between contract instability, nurse burnout, humanized care, and work engagement.
• To test a serial mediation model linking contract instability, burnout, humanization, and engagement in Spanish hospital nurses.
• To provide evidence for interventions aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of employment instability.

Main Methods:

• A nationwide cross-sectional survey was conducted among 400 fixed-term nurses in Spain.
• Data collected included demographics, number of contracts in 2024, and validated scales for burnout (MBI), engagement (UWES), and humanization (HUMAS).
• Spearman correlation coefficients were used to analyze bivariate relationships.

Main Results:

• Higher contract counts correlated positively with burnout (r = 0.42, p = 0.039).
• Work engagement was inversely associated with employment instability (r = -0.62, p = 0.018).
• Humanized care was negatively related to burnout (r = -0.61, p = 0.032), especially in sociability and self-efficacy.

Conclusions:

• Contractual precarity in nursing contributes to increased burnout.
• This precarity erodes perceptions of humanized care, subsequently suppressing nurse work engagement.
• Workforce stabilization and empathy-focused training are recommended to foster a sustainable nursing workforce.