Exploration of the facilitators of and barriers to work engagement in nursing

Abstract 

Background

Engagement is couched as the opposite to burnout and while there have been numerous studies that have supported the relationship between organizational antecedents and employee engagement, nurse engagement is still inadequately understood. Recent papers in the nursing literature have called for more research on this construct to be conducted with nurses so that nurse leaders can be better informed about the impact of engagement on outcomes for the organization.

Aim

To explore nurses’ experiences of their work environments and to reveal factors in the workplace that may facilitate or act as barriers to nurse engagement.

Methods and participants

A qualitative methodology was employed with the data from focus groups with a total of 20 nurses working in both general and psychiatric nursing.

Results

Facilitators of and barriers to engagement center around six areas of organizational life, namely; workload, control, reward, fairness, community and values.

Conclusion

Interventions aimed at fostering engagement are called for and through future research in the area of engagement, it is believed that nurses will gain more positive experiences from their work and subsequently a greater sense of well-being.

Keywords: Burnout, Engagement, Nurses, Well-being, Work-life model