Do Psychosocial Factors Moderate the Association of Fixed-term Employment with Work Interference with Family and Sleeping Problems in Registered Nurses: a Cross-sectional Questionnaire Survey

Background: The use of fixed-term employment has increased lately, particularly in Europe and in the health care sector. Previous studies have shown that especially among the health care sector employee's organizational justice perceptions and job control are important factors that are directly related to the welfare and attitudes of employees and may also help to buffer the negative impacts of many detrimental factors.

Objective: The present study examined the association of employment type (fixed-term vs. permanent) with work interference with family (WIF) and sleeping problems. In addition, we examined whether organizational justice and job control were able to moderate above-mentioned associations.

Design: Cross-sectional study design.

Setting: A random sample of registered nurses in Finland from the Central Register of Health Care Professionals.

Participants: 1767 Finnish registered nurses (1676 women and 91 men) aged 23-60 years (mean=42.6, SD=10.0) formed a final study sample.

Methods: The relationships were studied by linear regression analyses and the effects of gender, age, marital status, employment sector, work shift, number of children, and overtime work hours were adjusted for.

Results: Our results showed that organizational justice moderated the association between employment type and WIF. That is, those employees who were employed in fixed-term contracts and experienced low levels of organizational justice had higher levels of WIF than others. Employment type was not directly associated with WIF or sleeping problems. High justice levels were directly associated with less WIF and less sleeping problems, and high job control levels with less sleeping problems.

Conclusion: According to our results it would be important to promote fair organizational procedures and management in the health care sector especially for those who are employed with fixed-term contracts and in organizations with a lot of fixed-term employees.