Mindfulness, work-family conflict, family-work conflict and depressive symptoms among nurses: A cross-sectional design

Background: Work and family role conflict is a common source of stressors that affect nurses, leading to negative outcomes on their mental health, such as depressive symptoms, which affect nurses' job performance and patients' health outcomes. Mindfulness positively affected mental health, but its role in the relationship between role conflict and depressive symptoms was not previously examined. Purpose: To examine the mediating role of mindfulness in the relationship between work-family conflict and family-work conflict with depressive symptoms among nurses. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to collect data from a sample of 188 nurses from two large referral hospitals in northern and central Jordan. Data analysis was performed using Pearson correlation and macro PROCESS. Results: The mean score of depressive symptoms in our sample indicated that our sample is at risk for clinical depression. The bivariate correlation showed that depressive symptoms were significantly and negatively associated with work-family and family-work conflicts and significantly and positively associated with mindfulness. Both regression models explained 52% of the variance in depressive symptoms (F [6, 181] = 35.38, p < .001). The models also showed that mindfulness had a significant negative effect on depressive symptoms (t = -8.98, p < .001). The results of macro PROCESS indicated that mindfulness mediated the relationship between work-family conflict and family-work conflict with depressive symptoms. Conclusion: Nurses are exposed to a number of stressors in their work environment, including long work hours and frequent exposure to traumatic events. The current study showed that mindfulness might play a role in mediating the relationship between family-work conflict and family-work conflict with depressive symptoms. Nurses, nurse managers and policymakers can work with healthcare organizations to promote nurses' work quality by controlling risk factors, such as depressive symptoms, and implementing strategies to mitigate these risks.