This study was conducted to examine job stress, sleep quality, and fatigue and identify major variables that influence work engagement in order to develop an intervention program for shift duty nurses to enhance their work engagement.

The subjects of this study were 170 nurses working with shift duty at one university hospital and one general hospital located in G city. Data were collected from February to March 2018 with structured questionnaires, and analyzed by descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe’s test, Pearson correlation coefficients, and multiple regression.

The mean scores of job stress, sleep quality, fatigue, and work engagement were 3.87, 1.57, 4.64, and 2.36, respectively. The work engagement was negatively correlated with job stress, sleep quality, and fatigue. The most powerful variable influencing work engagement was sleep quality and the model showed explanatory power of 22.5%.

The results of this study indicate that the quality of sleep is most important factor affecting work engagement of shift nurses. This study suggest that it is necessary a variety of strategies in order to improve the quality of sleep and to intervene in job stress and fatigue, eventually lead to enhancing nursing performance.