Effects of a process improvement project on nurses’ well-being; a two-wave study in a Dutch hospital

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the longitudinal effects of a process improvement intervention on nurses’ well-being in a Dutch hospital. Based on the Job Demands-Resources model, the effect of the intervention was tested on job demands, job resources and nurses’ burnout and work engagement. A total of one-hundred-and-five nurses in four wards (two experimental samples that introduced a process improvement system during the research period, and two control samples) participated in the first measurement. Of those, seventy six also participated in the post measurement after the intervention. Repeated measures analyses and one-way ANOVA analyses showed no significant changes in the job demands and resources after the intervention. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the job resources are the most important predictors of burnout and work engagement. These results suggest that aiming to improve nurses’ well-being can best be geared towards increasing job resources.