The relationship between psychological need satisfaction, job affective wellbeing and work uncertainty among the academic nursing educators

Abstract

Background: The growing recognition of the connection between employees' wellbeing, working conditions, satisfaction and productivity has increased the requirement for understanding the need for a culture of health, wellbeing and certainty in the workplace. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) posits innate universal psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which imply work climates allowing satisfaction of these needs facilitate work engagement and psychological wellbeing as well as promoting motivation and wellbeing in the work place. Purpose: This research study aims to continue this trend by investigating the relationship between psychological need satisfaction, job affective wellbeing and uncertainty at work among academic nursing educators at the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University.

Methods: A descriptive correlational design was used. All academic nursing educators who were available and willing to participate at the time of data collection were included (N = 169).  Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction at work, Job-Related Affective Wellbeing Scale (JAWS), Personal and Work environment uncertainty scales were used to measure the study variables.

Results: The main finding of the study reveals perception of psychological need satisfaction among academic nursing educators is significantly related, and could lead to, higher feeling of job-related affective wellbeing, consequently increasing their tolerance of uncertainty at personal as well as work situations (p < .05).

Conclusions and recommendation: A positive and supportive work environment promoting employees’ sharing, learning, autonomy, competence, belonging or relatedness and staff interaction should be supported by organizations. Also, identifying organizational obstacles to embracing uncertainty through a training program focuses on building employee uncertainty management skills and, how to use their resources to improve their uncertainty management practices are essential.