Relationships among attitude to death, work engagement and organizational citizenship behaviors in emergency nurses

Abstract

Objective To investigate the attitude to death, work engagement and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) in emergency nurses, and to analyze the relationships among them. Methods Two hundred and fifty-one emergency nurses were investigated with Chinese version of Death Attitude Profile-Revised (DAP-R), the Medical Personnels Work Engagement questionnaire and Medical Staffs, Organizational Citizenship Behavior questionnaire. Results The attitude to death in emergency nurses was relatively positive and the total score of DAP-R was 103.49±14.76.There were significant differences on the score of nursing ages, emergency working years and religious beliefs (F=4.584, 6.159, 5.251, P<0.01). The neutral acceptance to death was positively correlated with the work engagement (r=0.098, P<0.01) , the work engagement was negatively correlated with death avoidance (r=-0.177, P<0.01) .The neutral acceptance to death was positively correlated with the OCB, civic responsibility and responsible behavior (r=0.155, 0.161, 0.202, P<0.05 or 0.01). Conclusion The attitude to death has significant influence on work engagement and OCB in emergency nurses. Nursing administrators should through establishing an effective strategies to improve the positive attitude to death and OCB level. Ultimately, give full play to the role of the emergency department nurse in terminal care and quality of emergency medical care can be improved. Key words: Emergency service, hospital; Nurse; Attitude to death; Work engagement; Organizational citizenship behaviors