Beyond Stress: Predictors of Job Satisfaction and Emotional Distress in Professional Nursing Home Caregivers

Background Nursing home caregivers face high job demands that compromise their psychological well‑being and retention, while organizational and personal resources may buffer these effects. Guided by the Job Demands–Resources model, this study examined how work overload, social support, team cohesion, resilience, purpose in life, and gratitude are related to emotional distress and job satisfaction among Spanish nursing home staff. Method In this cross‑sectional survey, 251 caregivers (70 % female; mean age 44.6 ± 9.9 years) employed during the COVID‑19 pandemic completed a questionnaire measuring job satisfaction, emotional distress, resilience, purpose in life, gratitude, social support, team cohesion, and work overload. Participants were recruited from 70 facilities via computer‑assisted web, telephone, or in‑person interviews. A multiple linear regression was performed. Results According to the emotional distress model (R² = 0.48), higher work overload was strongly associated with greater distress, whereas greater perceived social support, team cohesion and a stronger sense of purpose in life predicted lower distress. Professional role also emerged as a significant predictor: direct-care staff reported significantly less distress than indirect-care staff. Two significant interaction effects emerged: work overload predicted distress among individuals with higher social support, and resilience moderated the effect of overload on distress. In the job satisfaction model (R² = 0.55), social support was the strongest positive predictor, followed by purpose in life. Neither work overload nor any two‑way interactions with overload were significant. Conclusions The findings support the dual‐pathway structure of the JD‑R model: emotional distress was driven primarily by work overload, and only when paired with sufficient social support or high resilience did its impact on distress diminish. In contrast, overall job satisfaction was overwhelmingly determined by stable resources, principally team cohesion and, to a lesser degree, gratitude, regardless of workload level. Together, these findings indicate that reducing excessive workload must remain a priority while simultaneously strengthening relational and personal resources: expanding peer‐support structures, embedding resilience‐building exercises, integrating brief gratitude interventions, and offering meaning‐centered activities. Deploying these integrated organizational and individual interventions holds promise not only for attenuating distress and increasing satisfaction but also for strengthening staff retention and, ultimately, the quality of care in nursing home settings.