Examining resilience, moral sensitivity, and work engagement among Chinese anesthesia nurses

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Healthcare Management
• Psychology

Background:

• Global surgical volumes and workforce shortages necessitate task shifting in anesthesia care.
• China has a large, specialized anesthesia nursing workforce facing challenges like professional restrictions and lack of standardized education.
• Work engagement is critical for this workforce but remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between resilience and work engagement among Chinese anesthesia nurses.
• To examine the mediating role of moral sensitivity in the resilience-work engagement link.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional study involving 372 Chinese anesthesia nurses from 41 hospitals.
• Online questionnaires collected data on sociodemographics, resilience, moral sensitivity, and work engagement.
• Mediation analysis was performed using SPSS PROCESS macro (Model 4).

Main Results:

• Anesthesia nurses reported a work engagement score of 31.25 ± 7.75.
• Significant positive correlations were found between resilience, moral sensitivity, and work engagement (p < 0.01).
• Moral sensitivity significantly mediated the effect of resilience on work engagement (effect = 0.338, 53.7% of total effect).

Conclusions:

• Chinese anesthesia nurses exhibit relatively lower work engagement compared to similar nursing populations.
• Moral sensitivity plays a crucial mediating role, linking resilience to work engagement in this group.
• Findings support interventions to enhance resilience and moral sensitivity to improve anesthesia nurse work engagement.