Safety implications of different forms of understaffing among nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate the processes through which personnel understaffing and expertise understaffing jointly shape near misses among nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. BACKGROUND: Inadequate staffing is a chronic issue within the nursing profession, with the safety consequences of understaffing likely being exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. DESIGN: This study used a three-wave, time-separated survey design and collected data from 120 nurses in the United States working on the frontline of the pandemic in hospital settings. METHODS: Participants were recruited through convenience sampling in early April 2020. Eligible nurses completed three surveys across a 6-week period during the COVID-19 pandemic from mid-April to the end of May 2020. Study hypotheses were tested with path analyses. RESULTS/FINDINGS: Results reveal that personnel understaffing and expertise understaffing jointly shape near misses, which are known to precede and contribute to accidents and injuries, through different mechanisms. Specifically, personnel understaffing led to greater use of safety workarounds, which only induced near misses when cognitive failures were high. Further, higher levels of cognitive failures appeared to be the result of greater expertise understaffing. CONCLUSION: This study highlights the importance of addressing issues of understaffing, especially during times of crisis, to better promote nurse and patient safety. IMPACT: This study was the first to examine the distinct mechanisms by which two forms of understaffing impact safety outcomes in the form of near misses. Understanding these mechanisms can help leaders and policymakers make informed staffing decisions by considering the safety implications of understaffing issues.

Work as replenishment or responsibility? Moderating effects of occupational calling on the within-person relationship between COVID-19 news consumption and work engagement.

As the result of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), individuals have been inundated with constant negative news related to the pandemic. However, limited research examines how such news consumption impacts employees' work lives, including their ability to remain engaged with their work. Integrating conservation of resources theory and insights from the media psychology literature with research on occupational calling, we propose that weekly COVID-related news consumption heightens employees' anxiety levels, thereby frustrating their ability to remain engaged with work and that this process is differentially moderated by different facets of occupational calling. Specifically, we postulate that those who are called to their work primarily because it gives them personal meaning and purpose (i.e., higher in purposeful work) will remain more engaged with work in the face of the anxiety that arises from consuming COVID-related news, as their work may facilitate resource replenishment for these individuals. Conversely, we postulate that those who are drawn to their work primarily because it allows them to help others (i.e., higher in prosocial orientation) will experience the opposite effect, such that their inability to help others during the pandemic will strengthen the negative effect of anxiety on work engagement. Results from an 8-week weekly diary study with a sample of 281 Canadian employees during the pandemic provided support for our hypotheses. Implications are discussed for maintaining employee work engagement during the pandemic era, and beyond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Depending on your own kindness: The moderating role of self-compassion on the within-person consequences of work loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has transformed the way we work, with many employees working under isolating and difficult conditions. However, research on the antecedents, consequences, and buffers of work loneliness is scarce. Integrating research on need for belonging, regulatory loop models of loneliness, and self-compassion, the current study addresses this critical issue by developing and testing a conceptual model that highlights how COVID-related stressors frustrate employees' need for belonging (i.e., telecommuting frequency, job insecurity, and a lack of COVID-related informational justice), negatively impacting worker well-being (i.e., depression) and helping behaviors [i.e., organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)] through work loneliness. Furthermore, we examine the buffering role of self-compassion in this process. Results from a weekly diary study of U.S. employees conducted over 2 months during the initial stage of the pandemic provide support for the mediating role of work loneliness in relations between all three proposed antecedents and both outcomes. In addition, self-compassion mitigated the positive within-person relationship between work loneliness and employee depression, indicating that more self-compassionate employees were better able to cope with their feelings of work loneliness. Although self-compassion also moderated the within-person relationship between work loneliness and OCB, this interaction was different in form from our prediction. Implications for enhancing employee well-being and helping behaviors during and beyond the pandemic are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Disentangling the relationship between gender and work-family conflict: An integration of theoretical perspectives using meta-analytic methods.

Implicit in many discussions of work-family issues is the idea that managing the work-family interface is more challenging for women than men. We address whether this intuition is supported by the empirical data via a meta-analysis of gender differences in work-family conflict (WFC) based on more than 350 independent samples (N > 250,000 workers). Challenging lay perceptions, our results demonstrate that men and women generally do not differ on their reports of WFC, though there were some modest moderating effects of dual-earner status, parental status, type of WFC (i.e., time-, strain-, vs. behavior-based), and when limiting samples to men and women who held the same job. To better understand the relationship between gender and WFC, we engaged in theory-testing of mediating mechanisms based on commonly invoked theoretical perspectives. We found evidence in support of the rational view, no support for the sensitization and male segmentation perspectives, and partial support for the asymmetrical domain permeability model. Finally, we build theory by seeking to identify omitted mediators that explain the relationship between gender and work-interference-with-family, given evidence that existing theoretically specified mechanisms are insufficient to explain this relationship. Overall, we find more evidence for similarity rather than difference in the degree of WFC experienced by men and women. (PsycINFO Database Record