Abstract: Objective: To explore the mediating roles of perceived managerial care in the relationship between head nurse leadership and nurse work engagement, so as to provide a reference for promoting nurses' work engagement. Methods: From September to October 2024, a convenience sampling method was used to select 1576 clinical nurses from 6 tertiary general hospitals in Beijing and Wuhan as study subjects. Data were collected via questionnaires, including a general information questionnaire, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, and the Caring Assessment Tool-Administration. The mediating effects among variables were tested using the SPSS Process macro combined with the Bootstrap method. Results: The total scores of nurse work engagement, head nurse transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and perceived managerial care were 34.98±12.89, 64.50±15.71, 30.95±6.77, 145.14±30.03, respectively. Besides, transformational leadership (r=0.508, P<0.05) and transactional leadership (r=0.393, P<0.05) were both positively correlated with work engagement. Transformational leadership (r=0.705, P<0.05) and transactional leadership (r=0.434, P<0.05) were also positively correlated with perceived managerial care, which was positively linked with work engagement (r=0.388, P<0.05). Finally, the analysis showed that perceived managerial care partially mediated the relationship between transactional leadership and work engagement, and the mediating effect accounted for 29.50% of the total effect. Conclusion: Head nurses with a transactional leadship style should focus on nurses' perceived managerial care to strengthen the promoting effect of transactional leadership on nurse work engagement.

Key words: work engagement; managerial care; leadership; mediating effect