Relationship between work-family conflict on work engagement in Chinese nurses: multiple mediating effects of anxiety and emotional intelligence

Abstract

Background: In recent years, the work service quality of nurses has largely depended on their work engagement, which is extremely important and cannot be underestimated. Therefore, it is utmost importance to investigate the factors that can improve the work engagement of nurses, and the improvement in the level of work engagement of nurses is of great practical significance to the nursing service industry. A balance between work and family can promote the work engagement of nurses. This study aims to develop a structural model to assess the impact of work-family conflict on work engagement among Chinese clinical nurses using multiple mediators to clarify the underlying mechanisms of this relationship.Methods: This is a cross-sectional study involving 1,177 registered nurses from a hospital in China, which provided the work-family conflict, work engagement, anxiety, and emotional intelligence scales. AMOS 23.0 was used for the path analysis of multiple mediation models.Results: The total score of the work engagement of nurses was 58.49 ± 8.52, and the average score was 3.66 ± 0.53. Work-family conflict had a significant positive correlation with anxiety (r = 0.382, P < 0.001) and a significant negative correlation with work engagement (r = -0.381, P < 0.001) and emotional intelligence (r = -0.200, P < 0.001); anxiety had a significant negative correlation with work engagement (r = -0.326, P < 0.001) and emotional intelligence (r = -0.188, P < 0.001); and work engagement had a significant positive correlation with emotional intelligence (r = 0.326, P < 0.001). Emotional intelligence and anxiety partially mediated the relationship between work-family conflict and work engagement, with effect values of -0.092 and -0.075, respectively. The chain-mediating effect of anxiety and emotional intelligence exhibited a value of -0.05. The total indirect effect had a value of -0.172.Conclusions: Thus, it is suggested that hospital managers should take measures to alleviate work-family conflict, relieve anxiety, and improve the work engagement and emotional intelligence of nurses.