Medical Workers' Smartphone Use After Working Hours And Work Engagement: The Moderating Role Of Psychological Detachment

Smartphone use after working hours have enabled medical workers to stay connected to their work any place and any time, which have facilitated medical workers' work; however, these tools have also allowed work domain to more frequently intrude into home domain, which may have negative influence on medical workers' psychological experience in work and life. Based on boundary theory, this study selected work engagement and psychological detachment as two positive variables, to represent medical workers' psychological experience in work and life.In this diary study, taking medical workers as subjects, the study examined the associations among daily smartphone use after working hours (SUAW), daily psychological detachment and daily work engagement, by using Daily Smartphone Use After Work Hours Scale (DSUAW), the subscale psychological detachment of Recovery Experiences Instrument and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9). A total of 169 medical workers from tertiary hospital in Beijing and its surrounding areas participated in this survey. And 104 of them finally completed diary questionnaires on 5 successive 'workdays (n=520 data points). The results are as follows:First, medical workers with different demographic backgrounds showed significant differences on the level of psychological detachment and work engagement.Second, both SUAW and psychological detachment positively predicted work engagement at the day-level (n=520) and the person-level(N=104).Third, psychological detachment moderated the positive relationship between SUAW and work engagement at the person-level(N=104).Fourth,SUAW had positive lagged effects on next day's work engagement.The results showed that modest SUAW and psychological detachment had positive influences on work engagement. However, high psychological detachment might weaken the SUAW's positive influences on work engagement. In addition, the positive lagged effects of SUAW implied that SUAW might enhance the future work engagement in a short term. Finally, the study put forward effective ways to improve the work engagement of medical workers.