Social Support Exchange and Nurses’ Musculoskeletal Injuries in a Team Context: Anger as a Mediator

Abstract

Work-based musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are prevalent among health-care workers, particularly the nursing staff. The authors focused on the perceived social support exchange imbalance or the combination of higher perceived obligation to provide support to and lower perceived available support from the coworkers and examined the association between support exchange imbalance and nurses’ MSDs via anger. Using a sample of 410 nurses from 29 units across two hospitals, the authors found that when individual nurses reported higher support exchange imbalance, they experienced more anger, which in turn was associated with more severe MSD symptoms in low back and upper limbs. The association between support exchange imbalance and anger was exacerbated when nurses perceived that a similar level of support was available within their unit.

The Social Context of Caregiving Work in Health Care: Pushing Conceptual and Methodological Frontiers

“…In a recent study of a community hospice care program, DiCicco-Bloom and DiCicco-Bloom (2019) found that when leaders support discussing and processing emotional labor in interdisciplinary meetings, it improves both care quality as well as employee experience of the care they deliver and the emotional labor in which they engage. Chang et al (2020) and Kossek et al (2019) similarly demonstrate the importance of organizational and managerial support to employee emotional experience, highlighting the importance of balance and adaptability.…”

“…The papers in the special issue offer a sophisticated rendering of emotional experience and its consequences. Specifically, they depict emotion as embodied (Chang et al, 2020;Cottingham & Erickson, 2019), complex (Cottingham & Erickson, 2019), and nonobviously consequential (Lee et al, 2019). They also point toward conditions under which emotions become shared and collective (Cottingham & Erickson, 2019;Lee et al, 2020).…”

“…The articles comprising the special issue advance and challenge these leading perspectives and often do so in tandem with considering the changing reality and increasing complexity and pressures of health-care work. Chang et al (2020) focus on a pervasive issue for caregivers-musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). They find in a study of 410 nurses in 29 units that such injuries are grounded in their emotional experience and support.…”

Prevention of occupational injuries and accidents: A social capital perspective

“…well. It was evident that, when nurses face an imbalance between the level of needed and actual social support, anxiety and anger can develop, and that can be predictive of musculoskeletal disabilities (Chang et al, 2019). The absence of family support associated with long working hours and night shifts can realistically lead to ignoring personal safety precautions.…”

“…According to effort-reward imbalance model, when nurses have to fulfil the job demands with a low level of support, it creates an imbalance between these two indicators (Siegrist, 1996). This imbalance increases pressure and anger, which in turn develops the chance for safety negligence (Chang et al, 2019).…”