Mediating role of psychological empowerment on relationship between quality of work life and burnout among nurses in Malaysia

Reducing the level of burnout is often the primary aim that healthcare organisations seek to achieve. Present literature has shown that quality of work life dynamically induce positive psychological empowerment that could shield nurses against burnout. Despite convincing evidence from previous studies on the effects of work life quality and psychological empowerment on burnout, there is still lack of knowledge pertaining to the interplay of quality of work life and burnout of tourism healthcare nurses in Malaysia. Therefore, this study examines the mediating effect of psychological empowerment on quality of work life and burnout level of nurses at tourism healthcare organisations in Malaysia. In this quantitative study, a structured questionnaire with appropriate Likert scales were used as the instrument for data collection from 432 nurses within 10 tourism healthcare organisations registered with Malaysian Health Tourism Council (MHTC). The validity and reliability of the measurement and structural model were established. The Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses. Findings of this study revealed that provisions of work life quality (adequate and fair compensation, constitution in the work organisation, safe and healthy working conditions, social integration, social relevance of work-life, and, work and life span) promote psychological empowerment amongst nurses. Moreover, the findings reveal that there was a substantial mediating effect of psychological empowerment on the relationship between quality of work life and burnout. The findings contribute to the literature by integrating factors that could perhaps curtail the effects of burnout. It is recommended that tourism healthcare organisations to augment psychological empowerment by embracing work life quality principles. With this effort, nurses’ burnout can be reduced, leading to superior management of emotional and physical demands of nursing profession. The study addresses the implications for theory, practice and future research.