Factors associated with work‐family enrichment among Chinese nurses assisting Wuhan’s fight against the 2019 COVID‐19 pandemic

Zhang, Yinying; Yang, Min; Wang, Rong

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To examine the relationship between work‐family enrichment and two contextual factors (job support and family support), together with two personal factors (family boundary flexibility and prosocial motivation) among Chinese nurses assisting Wuhan in its fight against the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. BACKGROUND: The COVID‐19 pandemic was first reported in Wuhan, China, and has now spread worldwide, which has brought attention to the pivotal role of nurses in public health emergencies. Work‐family enrichment is a bidirectional structure, including work‐to‐family enrichment and family‐to‐work enrichment, that can yield many mutually beneficial results in both work and family domains among clinical nurses. However, few studies have investigated work‐family enrichment and its influential factors among front‐line nurses during public health emergencies. METHODS: A cross‐sectional research design was adopted with a snowball sample of 258 Chinese nurses assisting Wuhan’s anti‐pandemic efforts. Data were collected from March 21, 2020 until April 10, 2020 through a battery of online questionnaires. Descriptive, univariate, and hierarchical linear regression analyses and a Pearson correlation test were performed. A STROBE checklist was used to report findings. RESULTS: The results showed that prosocial motivation, family support and job support predicted high work‐to‐family enrichment in those nurses, while prosocial motivation, family support, and family boundary flexibility predicted high family‐to‐work enrichment. CONCLUSIONS: The study confirmed the importance of paying attention to the work‐family enrichment of front‐line medical workers during the COVID‐19 pandemic, so that they could concentrate on their anti‐pandemic work and maintain their enthusiasm for disaster nursing. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: The findings can help health administrators in affected countries around the world identify the influential factors of work‐family enrichment among front‐line nurses during infectious disease outbreaks, specifically in the areas of mobilizing nurses’ prosocial motivation and giving sufficient job support.