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Social Job Resources as Sources of Meaningfulness and its Effects on Nurses’ Vigor and Emotional Exhaustion: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Spanish Nurses

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Abstract

This study investigates the mediating role of psychological meaningfulness among social job resources (i.e., coworkers and supervisor support), vigor, and emotional exhaustion in a nursing context. In spite of progress in understanding which organizational influence affects nurses’ vigor and emotional exhaustion, the psychological mechanisms assumed to underlie the associations have not been fully explored. The sample for this study consisted of 171 nurses from Spanish hospitals (54.4 %) and Primary Care Centers (45.6 %). The mediation model was tested using the bootstrapping procedure. Our findings confirmed that psychological meaningfulness fully mediates the impact of social job resources on vigor at work. Moreover, psychological meaningfulness partially mediated the impact of social job resources on emotional exhaustion. Results suggest that meaningfulness plays an important role in the connection between job resources, vigor, and emotional exhaustion. The findings contribute to our understanding of the psychological processes that can explain how job resources contribute to the energetic aspect of burnout and engagement among nurses. Providing nurses with more social job resources, such as coworker and supervisor support, could activate their levels of personal meaningfulness and thus enhance their levels of well-being at work.

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Acknowledgments

Author Luis Manuel Blanco has received a research grant FPU for predoctoral studies from the Spanish Ministry of Education (AP2010-0099). Author Eva Garrosa has received a research project from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2012-34692).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Madrid, CP 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Luis Manuel Blanco-Donoso, Eva Garrosa & Bernardo Moreno-Jiménez

  2. Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing, University of São Paulo, Avenida dos Bandeirantes, 3900 - Vila Monte Alegre, Ribeirão Preto, SP, 14040-902, Brasil

    Elton Carlos de Almeida & Sonia María Villela-Bueno

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  1. Luis Manuel Blanco-Donoso
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  2. Eva Garrosa
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  4. Elton Carlos de Almeida
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  5. Sonia María Villela-Bueno
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Correspondence to Luis Manuel Blanco-Donoso.

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Funding

This research was funded by an FPU grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education (AP2010-0099) and by a project from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2012-34692).

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Blanco-Donoso, L.M., Garrosa, E., Moreno-Jiménez, B. et al. Social Job Resources as Sources of Meaningfulness and its Effects on Nurses’ Vigor and Emotional Exhaustion: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Spanish Nurses. Curr Psychol 36, 755–763 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-016-9463-x

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