Aim: This review aims to discover the ways burnout and JS influence OCB among nurses.


Methods: Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative research till 2025, this narrative review brings together evidence from PubMed and comparable databases, centering on studies involving registered nurses.


Results: Higher JS consistently showed up as a reliable predictor of stronger OCB, sometimes explaining a surprisingly large share of its variance. These effects often worked through mechanisms like organizational justice, social connectivity, or nurses’ own growing sense of professional capability. Meanwhile, burnout, especially its more corrosive elements such as depersonalization and emotional exhaustion, was strongly linked to declines in OCB, whereas a solid sense of personal accomplishment seemed to act like a buffer. Structural empowerment helped soften exhaustion and indirectly lifted OCB, and supportive supervisors increased nurses’ commitment as well as their willingness to engage in citizenship acts. When woven together, these threads formed an integrated model accounting for about 45% of variation in OCB, with ethical climate and workload standing out as meaningful contributors.


Conclusion: If JS is the fuel for OCB, burnout is the slow leak that drains it. Empowerment strategies, stronger supervisory support, and ethical organizational climates appear capable of preserving OCB while simultaneously holding burnout at bay, changes that ripple outward into patient care and retention.