To investigate the mediating role of psychological resilience between job satisfaction and work engagement in geriatric psychiatric nursing assistants.
A cross-sectional study.
This study enrolled nursing assistants who had worked in the Department of Geriatric Psychiatry of a tertiary psychiatric hospital between January 2023 and March 2024. Recruitment and data collection were conducted in April–May 2024 after ethics approval was obtained on 3 April 3, 2024.
A total of 206 nursing assistants were included, with 137 females (66.5%) and 147 individuals (71.4%) aged 50–59 years.
Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale and Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire were used to measure work engagement, psychological resilience and job satisfaction, respectively. Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyse the relationships among work engagement, job satisfaction and psychological resilience. The structural equation model was established, and the intermediary effect was verified.
The scores of psychological resilience, job satisfaction and work engagement were 70.2 (14.7), 72.2 (10.7) and 38.1 (10.7), respectively. There were positive correlations between psychological resilience and work engagement (r=0.512, p<0.01), job satisfaction and work engagement (r=0.452, p<0.01) and job satisfaction and psychological resilience (r=0.406, p<0.01). Psychological resilience played a part of intermediary role between job satisfaction and work engagement, and the indirect effect was statistically significant (β=0.215, p<0.001). The model fit indices indicated a good fit (root mean square error of approximation=0.071, comparative fit index=0.979, Tucker–Lewis index=0.965).
Our findings suggest that psychological resilience may act as an intermediary between job satisfaction and work engagement in geriatric psychiatric nursing assistants. Nursing managers should carry out intervention strategies based on the path of influencing psychological elasticity, improving job satisfaction and work engagement, and ensuring the quality of care of nursing assistants in geriatric psychiatry.