The effect of experienced compassion at work on nursing home certified nursing assistants' well-being and turnover intentions.

BACKGROUND

Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) are essential to health care delivery in U.S. nursing homes (NHs), yet these direct caregivers are affected by high turnover, which impacts care quality. CNA turnover is costly, resulting in 6-figure annual losses for many NHs. Improving well-being and retaining employees is important for NH survival. Compassion benefits employees and their organizations, and may offer NHs a promising solution.

PURPOSE: We study whether experienced compassion at work (experienced compassion) predicts higher well-being (meaningfulness of work [MOW], psychological vitality [vitality], and resilience) for NH CNAs, and if well-being predicts lower job and profession-level turnover intentions.

METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: In-person survey data were collected from CNAs (n=71) at three timepoints in a convenience sample of Kansas and Virginia NHs. Hypothesized models were tested using path analyses after validating scale reliability.

FINDINGS: Experienced compassion predicts higher MOW, vitality, and resilience. Vitality predicts lower job turnover intentions; vitality and MOW predict lower CNA profession turnover intentions. Experienced compassion predicts lower CNA profession turnover intentions via MOW with a total effect of b=-0.83. In all models, experienced compassion predicts lower turnover intentions (b=-0.45 to -0.81).

CONCLUSIONS

Experienced compassion benefits CNAs and their NHs, and may promote LTC workforce sustainability.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Managers should seek ways to support experienced compassion between caregivers and care recipients (e.g., recognize and reward compassionate caregivers) and among co-workers (e.g., peer mentoring programs).