Work immersion and perceived stress among clinical nurses: A latent profile analysis and moderated mediation analysis

Abstract

Background Exploring the relationship between individual work immersion and perceived stress is critical for effective psychological interventions and human resource management for clinical nurses as well as for alleviating nursing staff shortages, especially after experiencing a major public health event. In order to further dissect the influencing factors of perceived stress among nursing staff, our study introduces the concepts of perfectionism and social connectedness, which aim to analyse the specific pathways that influence perceived stress in terms of an individual's intrinsic and external characteristics. Therefore, this study will provide relevant recommendations for the development of stress management measures for nursing staff. Methods This was a cross-sectional survey. 993 clinical registered nurses were included from four hospitals in Guangzhou through a convenience sampling method. Clinical nurses' work immersion, perceived stress, perfectionism, and social connectedness were investigated using questionnaires with good reliability and validity. Relationships between variables were studied by t-test, analysis of variance, Pearson's correlation analysis, latent profile analysis, and moderated mediation analysis. Results This study was based on latent profile analysis. The results showed that (1) general influences on nurses' perceived stress included only child, labor relationship, labor allowance, and family support; (2) nurses' work immersion's contained four subgroups: low (12.6%), medium-low (39.8%), medium-high (39.9%), and highest (7.7%); (3) perfectionism played a mediating role between the association of work immersion and perceived stress, in which negative perfectionism has a masking effect; (4) social connectedness plays a moderating role in the mediation model of perceived stress. Conclusions Work immersion, perfectionism, and social connectedness have an important impact on clinical nurses' perceived stress. Nursing managers or leaders should pay attention to the variability of individual work immersion status, adopt reasonable stress management strategies, accurately identify positive perfectionist groups and mobilize intergroup intimacy, and safeguard the quality of daily nursing care in order to reduce nursing turnover and alleviate the problem of staff shortage.