Background Nurses are considered individuals engaged with their profession and altruistic persons with vocation for caregiving (Eley et al., 2011, 2012), thus, presenting specific personality traits. Research shows a relationship between personality and work role performance (Ellershaw et al., 2016), and some personality traits such as resilience are related with engagement among nurses (Othman et al., 2013).

Aims To know engagement levels among nurses, to identify Eysenck personality traits, and to analyse the relationship between engagement and personality and their variations according socio-demographic and professional characteristics.

Method Data were collected using an anonymous questionnaire composed by sociodemographic questions, and Portuguese versions of EPQ (Eysenck & Eysenck,1996; Sandin et al.,2002) and UWES (Schaufeli & Bakker,2003; Marques-Pinto & Picado,2011). Participated 355 Portuguese nurses (67% from hospitals, 62% working by shifts; 69% with a definitive job contract, mean age of 34.4 years, mean job experience of 11.5 years, 70% female).

Results Despite 72% considered their job as stressful, work engagement presents high levels (vigour M = 4.4 on 0–6 scale), dedication (M = 4.5) and absorption (M = 4.2). Personality traits reveal more extroversion (M = 3.9 on 0–6 scale) and conformity (M = 4.1), and less psychoticism (M = 2.1) and neuroticism (M = 1.7). Age correlates negatively with extroversion and psychoticism, while neuroticism correlates negatively with age, and job experience. Vind dedication correlates negatively with psychoticism and neuroticism. Personality traits explain between nearby 7–9% of engagement. Shifts, job stress perception and work place affect engagement.

Conclusions Despite the sample presented high work engagement, extroversion and conformity, weak relationship between some engagement and Eysenck personality traits was found, suggesting that these traits are not the most important. In the future, other traits such as big five must be considered, as well job characteristics, which can affect work engagement (Santos et al., 2015). INT-SO project tries to study this relationship on Portugal, Spain and Brazil.