Burnout and ill-wellbeing of talented professional nurses: The moderating role of dispositional employability

Abstract

We investigated the moderating role of dispositional employability on the relationship between work burnout and ill-wellbeing of professional nurses. Our sample consisted of 433 professional nurses (female = 88.2%; black = 96.5%) from the North-West Province, South Africa. The nurses completed the Maslach-Burnout Inventory-General Survey, the General Health Questionnaire, and the Dispositional Measure of Employability. Multiple regression analyses results showed work burnout dimensions of mental distance and exhaustion to predict physical and psychological ill-wellbeing of professional nurses. While the dispositional employability of career resilience predicted the physical and psychological dimensions of ill-well-being, it did not moderate the relationship between burnout and ill-wellbeing. The dispositional employability of openness to change and career proactivity partially moderated the relationship between burnout and ill-wellbeing. From these findings, we conclude that nurses who adopted dispositions such as openness to change and proactive career planning were less likely to experience the negative consequences of work burnout on their wellbeing.

Keywords:

• burnout
• dispositional employability
• professional nurses
• physical and psychological ill-wellbeing