Work-Life Balance and Moral Competence Among Nurses in Medical-Surgical Units of Selected Tertiary Hospitals.

Abstract:

The medical-surgical unit is one of the busiest units in the hospital registering as high as 20 patients per nurse (Tamayo et al., 2022; Villanueva, 2023). Due to this staffing situation the nurses tend to be overburdened which makes their work-life balance unstable that may directly affect their moral competence. Although there is a vast amount of literature about work-life balance among nurses, as well as various studies on moral competence, there has not been much study about how work-life balance and moral competence interact. The study aims to add to the larger conversation of work-life balance impacting moral competence of nurses by making sure that those who provide patient care have the resources they need for a morally enhanced happy and healthier career. The researcher used quantitative descriptive correlational design employing non-probability consecutive sampling technique based on the established inclusion criteria. G*Power software was used to determine the sampling size of 84-92 and data gathered reached a sample of 90 respondents. The study has been granted approval by the FEU-Ethics Review Board prior to implementation. Two adapted instruments were employed and were subjected to validity and reliability testing. Cronbach α coefficient results yielded a high reliability for both instruments obtaining 0.946 (Work-Life Balance) and 0.989 (Moral Competence) respectively. Data gathering was initiated using google forms. Frequency and percentile, weighted mean and standard deviation, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis’s test, Spearman’s rho, and logistic regression are the statistical treatment used to interpret the gathered data. Staff nurses in the medical-surgical unit exhibit a “high agreement” in perceived level work-life balance and “very high” perceived level in moral competence. The demographic factors such as age, sex, civil status, years in service, and years assigned in the medical-surgical unit do not significantly affect the perceived level of work-life balance or neither moral competence, except for the job status of which regular staff nurses assigned in the medical surgical unit seemed to exhibit higher moral competence as opposed to contractual staff nurses. Furthermore, the results show that moral competence is dependent on work-life balance and the supportive work environment as the sole contributor.