Serial multiple mediation of organizational commitment and job burnout in the relationship between psychological capital and anxiety in Chinese female nurses: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey.

BACKGROUND: Nurses play an important role in medical and health services but anxiety among those in this profession is widespread. Anxiety not only damages the physical and mental health of the individual, but also reduces the efficiency of their work and the quality of care, ultimately impacting on patient care. Therefore, it is necessary to elucidate the factors that lead to anxiety and explore measures to reduce the impact these factors have on nurses.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the serial-multiple mediation of psychological capital (PsyCap), organizational commitment, job burnout, and anxiety among Chinese female nurses.

DESIGN: A cross-sectional stratified cluster sampling study.

PARTICIPANTS: The study consisted of 1354 Chinese female nurses from two tertiary grade A hospitals in Heilongjiang Province, China.

METHODS: The Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale, the Chinese psychological capital questionnaire, the Chinese Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the Chinese Employee Organizational Commitment Questionnaire were used to gather data. Descriptive analysis, independent-samples T-test, one-way analysis of variance, Spearman correlation analyses, ordinary least-squares regression and the bootstrap method were used to analyze data.

RESULTS: The prevalence rate of anxiety among nurses was found to be 41.1%, and there were significant differences in anxiety symptoms in age (F = 15.54, p < 0.001) and marital status (F = 5.41, p < 0.001), but not education (F = 1.50, p = 0.224) among nurses. Overall, the serial-multiple mediation of organizational commitment and job burnout in the relationship between PsyCap and anxiety was found to be statistically significant.

CONCLUSIONS: The results of the present study showed that positive PsyCap was sequentially associated with increased organizational commitment first, and then decreased job burnout, which was in turn related to reduced symptoms of anxiety among female nurses.