Job Demands, Job Resources and Work Engagement Among Nurses in Tertiary Care Hospitals, Thanh Hoa Province, The Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Abstract

Job resources stimulate and forward the willingness to dedicate one’s efforts and abilities to the work whereas job demands exhaust employees’ mental and physical energy. When the job resources increase, job demand decrease, work engagement will increase. The purposes of this study were to examine job demands, job resources, and work engagement as well as to examine the relationship between job demands, job resources and work engagement among nurses in tertiary care hospitals in Thanh Hoa province, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The sample consisted of 352 nurses, randomly selected from nurses in six tertiary care hospitals in Thanh Hoa Province. The research instruments were the Job Demands-Resources Scale (JDRS) and the 9-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9). The validity of JDRS and UWES were confirmed for validity by the developers. The reliability coefficient of the JDRS and UWES-9 were .83.and .82, respectively. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rank- order correlation.

The results of the study indicated that;

The job demands and job resources as perceived by nurses were at moderate level.

The overall score of work engagements perceived by nurses was at an average level.

There was no relationship between job demands and work engagement whereas the job resources showed statistically significant moderate positive relationship with work engagement.

The results of this study could provide valuable information to nurse administrators in six tertiary care hospitals to understand the relationship between job demands, job resources and nurse work engagement for the development of proper strategies to reduce job demand and increase job resources in order to enhance work engagement among nurses.