This study offers an alternative approach to address on-going concerns about burnout of healthcare employees. Departing from the existing job-demand based approach proposing that healthcare employees' burnout can be resolved by reducing demands, we theorize that patient-centered prosocial behavior, even if it often increases job demands, could serve as potential job resources that fuel positive energy to vitalize nurses at work. We further theorize that this possibility could be more pronounced among a group of nurses with a strong sense of ethical membership regarding their hospital (i.e., moral identification). To test our hypotheses, we used a sample of 202 nurses from 104 South Korean hospitals. We found that, even controlling for workloads as an indicator of job demand, nurses who engage in patient-centered prosocial behavior (i.e., relational caring) are likely to feel vitalized, and this pattern is more salient among a group of nurses with high moral identification. Results indicate that prosocial behavior could be an alternative job resource that helps nurses flourish at work.
Keywords: healthcare employees; moral identification; relational caring; vitality.