Work-life balance and well-being among nurses : A literature review
Yaqub, Hira (2025)
2025
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025121938561
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025121938561
Tiivistelmä
Work-life balance is a crucial issue affecting personal wellbeing, professional satisfaction, and retention of nurses globally. Although nurses play a very significant role in the health care sys-tems, they face continuous stressors including extended work hours, emotional fatigue, shift work, and organizational demands that demand on their general wellbeing.
The thesis is a literature review of the work-life balance and the wellbeing among nurses by syn-thesizing the results of 9 peer-reviewed empirical studies published in 2013-2025. PubMed, EB-SCOhost (CINAHL), Google Scholar and MEDLINE were searched systematically. The studies that passed the inclusion criteria were also analysed using thematic analysis. There were five important themes, including work-family conflict and burnout, sociodemographic factors, working conditions and organizational support, work-life balance initiatives, and wellbeing associated with compassion satisfaction.
The review revealed uniform findings that high work-family conflict is a general cause of stress, emotional burnout and exhaustion, which in turn result in less job satisfaction and intention to quit the profession. These challenges are even increased by sociodemographic factors including gen-der, marital status and parenthood especially. Burnout and turnover are intensively aggravated by poor working conditions such as understaffing, workload, and unpredictable working hours. On the other hand, leadership that was supportive, organizational wellbeing programs, and available work-life balance programs were found to positively affect the psychological wellbeing, engage-ment, and compassion satisfaction of nurses.
Overall, the results point to the fact that work-life balance is closely related to mental, physical, and emotional health of nurses and their ability to provide high-quality care to patients. A better working environment, organizational culture that encourages good working conditions, and socio-emotional and demographic needs should be a priority in enhancing sustainable nursing practice, and empowering healthcare systems.
The thesis is a literature review of the work-life balance and the wellbeing among nurses by syn-thesizing the results of 9 peer-reviewed empirical studies published in 2013-2025. PubMed, EB-SCOhost (CINAHL), Google Scholar and MEDLINE were searched systematically. The studies that passed the inclusion criteria were also analysed using thematic analysis. There were five important themes, including work-family conflict and burnout, sociodemographic factors, working conditions and organizational support, work-life balance initiatives, and wellbeing associated with compassion satisfaction.
The review revealed uniform findings that high work-family conflict is a general cause of stress, emotional burnout and exhaustion, which in turn result in less job satisfaction and intention to quit the profession. These challenges are even increased by sociodemographic factors including gen-der, marital status and parenthood especially. Burnout and turnover are intensively aggravated by poor working conditions such as understaffing, workload, and unpredictable working hours. On the other hand, leadership that was supportive, organizational wellbeing programs, and available work-life balance programs were found to positively affect the psychological wellbeing, engage-ment, and compassion satisfaction of nurses.
Overall, the results point to the fact that work-life balance is closely related to mental, physical, and emotional health of nurses and their ability to provide high-quality care to patients. A better working environment, organizational culture that encourages good working conditions, and socio-emotional and demographic needs should be a priority in enhancing sustainable nursing practice, and empowering healthcare systems.