Abstract
This chapter builds on several studies about the relational job design (organizational practice) and nurses’ wellbeing from different healthcare organizations in Portugal. Altogether, studies demonstrate that the psychological effects of relational job characteristics (RJCs), namely affective commitment to patients, perceived social impact and social worth explain additional variance of nurses´ work engagement and burnout, even controlling for the effects of other well-studied job characteristics. Furthermore, these effects spillover to the life and the organizational domains. Indeed, we found that the psychological effects of RJCs affect nurses’ life satisfaction and perceived health, and nurses’ affective commitment to the organization through work engagement and burnout. With this set of studies, we explore the potential role of interactions with patients to improve nurses’ wellbeing, which is a less explored avenue when considering patients’ role in the Healthy Healthcare systems.
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Glossary
- Affective organizational commitment:
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emotional attachment to the organization, which is at the core of the worker’s desire to maintain organizational membership (Meyer & Allen, 1991).
- Perceived social impact:
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degree to which employees believe their actions have a positive impact on others (Grant, 2007).
- Perceived social worth:
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perception that one’s actions are valued by others (Grant, 2007).
- Work engagement:
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motivational, positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).
- Affective commitment to clients:
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sense of emotional concern and dedication to the people impacted by one’s work (Grant, 2007)sense of emotional concern and dedication to the people impacted by one’s work (Grant, 2007).
- Burnout
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syndrome characterized by exhaustion (feeling depleted by work) and cynicism (distancing from others at work) as its core dimensions (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004).
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Castanheira, F., Chambel, M.J., Santos, A., Rodrigues, F.R. (2020). Healthy Healthcare in Portugal: Empirical Studies of Relational Job Characteristics and Wellbeing Among Hospital Nurses. In: Tevik Løvseth, L., de Lange, A.H. (eds) Integrating the Organization of Health Services, Worker Wellbeing and Quality of Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59467-1_17
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