Influence of Family and Organizational Support on Work–Life Balance among Married Women Nurses in Hospitals

Abstract

Background: The above factors characterize hospital nursing: rotation, night work, emotional involvement, high demand for care of patients, and time sensitivity of clinical tasks. These demands on the part of the nurse may conflict with the child-care, home duties, and elderly care needs and desires for married women nurses. Thus, family support and organisational support are potential resources to support work–life balance.

Objective: This paper examines the link between family support and organisational support and their respective influences on the work–life balance of married female nurses working in hospitals, the processes through which the two types of support bring about the impact and proposes an evidence-informed hospital policy framework and empirical research agenda.

Methods: A structured secondary-evidence synthesis was developed based upon the most recent peer-reviewed literature published between 2023 and 2026, and additional studies that directly investigated married female nurses, work–family conflict, perceived organisational support, nursing work environments and work–life balance were selected. When sources provide numerical results, only these are reported. It's not saying that they took a new sample of the population or that they did new statistical tests.

Evidence: Recent evidence has been found to consistently link work–family outcomes with family harmony, demands of childcare, night shift, supportive colleagues and supervisors, perceived organisational support, decent work and burnout. A study of 646 married female nurses identified low-conflict, work-dominant-conflict and high-conflict profiles, and family and workplace support differences between nurses who were more likely to be in the high conflict profile (Yao et al., 2024). A survey of 1,292 hospital nurses had a 75.2% valid response rate with a mean score for work–family balance of 44.35 (SD = 8.693) (Tang et al., 2025). The decent work and burnout pathways were associated with work–family enrichment and organisational support, as reported by 355 Nurses (Xu and Zhao, 2024).

Finally, the influence of interpersonal resources on organisational conditions to the work–life balance of married women nurses has been observed. The family support and predictable scheduling, staffing levels and supervision contribute to reducing the work-related burden while the household and spousal cooperation contributes to reducing the domestic burden. Improved hospital policies should shift emphasis from coping to both