Pandemic Lessons for Future Nursing Shortage: A Prospective Cohort Study of Nurses’ Work Engagement before and during 16 Months of COVID-19

Table 3

Primary outcome work engagement: before COVID-19 versus during the 16 months of subsequent COVID-19 waves by linear regression.

	Pre-COVID March-20	+4 months July-20		+8 months November-20		+16 months July-21
	Mean (CI)	Mean (CI)	July-20 vs pre-COVID value	Mean (CI)	Nov-20 vs pre-COVID value	Mean (CI)	July-21 vs pre-COVID value
Overall work engagement
Crude	4.28 (4.15–4.40)	4.10 (3.83–4.38)	0.022	3.86 (3.58–4.15)	<0.001	3.88 (3.59–4.17)	<0.001^∗
Adjusted	4.57 (4.34–4.80)	4.42 (4.03–4.80)	0.041^†	4.19 (3.80–4.58)	<0.001^†	4.19 (3.80–4.58)	<0.001^†
Subcategory vigour
Crude	4.00 (3.86–4.15)	3.91 (3.60–4.89)	0.257	3.54 (3.21–3.86)	<0.001	3.62 (3.29–3.95)	<0.001
Adjusted	4.08 (3.82–4.35)	3.11 (3.55–3.64)	0.258^†	3.62 (3.18–4.06)	<0.001^†	3.70 (3.25–4.14)	<0.001^†
Subcategory dedication
Crude	4.83 (4.69–4.97)	4.53 (4.23–4.83)	<0.001	4.32 (4.00–4.63)	<0.001	4.30 (3.98–4.61)	<0.001
Adjusted	5.06 (4.80–5.31)	4.78 (4.36–5.19)	<0.001^†	4.57 (4.14–4.99)	<0.001^†	4.54 (4.11–4.97)	<0.001^†
Subcategory absorption
Crude	3.99 (3.84–4.14)	3.85 (3.52–4.18)	0.118	3.69 (3.35–4.02)	0.001	3.70 (3.36–3.14)	0.003
Adjusted	4.55 (4.28–4.82)	4.45 (4.00–4.75)	0.253^†	4.31 (3.58–4.27)	0.011^†	4.29 (3.83–4.11)	0.007^†

Crude: dependent: work engagement; independent: measure points. ^†Crude analyses with adjustment for age and sex.