Oral Presentation by Ahmed Khaoudi¹, Soufian Azouaghe²
¹ Moulay Ismail University, Morocco ² Mohammed V University, Morroco
TIME: Thursday, 16 July, 14:30 – 16:00
Location: Room 1
Session: 21
Abstract
The healthcare sector represents a central pillar for social stability and collective well-being, with nurses playing a key frontline role in ensuring care quality and achieving public health objectives (International Council of Nurses [ICN], 2023a, 2023b). However, nursing work in public hospitals is characterized by strong organizational and psychosocial constraints, particularly shift work, atypical schedules, and high workload, whose negative effects on psychological health are well documented (Molero et al., 2022; Montgomery & Lainidi, 2024; Page & Graves, 2021; Vincent-Höper et al., 2017). Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014, 2017), this contribution adopts a critical work psychology perspective to examine how temporal organization of work operates as a structural job demand shaping nurses’ work activity and psychological health. While JD-R research has demonstrated the protective role of resources, this paper argues that dominant applications of the model often insufficiently address the organizational production of demands, particularly those related to working time. Focusing on public hospital settings, the paper examines key resources that may buffer the impact of shift work on nurses’ psychological well-being, namely job autonomy, coping strategies, and the perceived usefulness and social meaning of nursing work—a dimension that remains underexplored within JD-R research. From an activity-centered perspective, these resources are analyzed not as individual traits but as situated and organizationally conditioned processes embedded in work activity. The contribution further offers a critical discussion of Quality of Work Life (QWL) programs in hospitals. It shows how QWL initiatives, when disconnected from temporal organization, staffing levels, and decision latitude, tend to individualize responsibility for well-being and obscure structural determinants of psychological strain. This paper argues for a reorientation of occupational health interventions toward organizational transformation, emphasizing participatory work-time arrangements, collective regulation, and recognition of the social utility of nursing work as central resources for psychological health.