This paper aimed to investigate the relationship between social support and quality of life for nurses in infectious disease departments in China, as well as the function of psychological resilience in mediating this relationship. Nurses in infectious disease departments play a critical role in the prevention and control of infectious diseases and in public health care services in general, and their quality of life can affect the quality of clinical nursing work they do. However, there are few studies on the relationship between nurses' social support networks and their quality of life. A cross‐sectional study was conducted using a sample of 866 clinical nurses from the infectious disease departments of 10 general hospitals in China. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey from January to May 2021. The mediating influence of psychological resilience on social support and quality of life was investigated using structural equation modelling. The score of quality of life was (36.36 ± 7.64). Quality of life was positively correlated with social support and psychological resilience (r 1 = 0.521, r 2 = 0.583; p < .01), and psychological resilience was positively correlated with social support (r = 0.426; p < .01) as well. The mediating effect of psychological resilience between social support and quality of life was 0.233, accounting for 37% of the total effect. The quality of life of nurses working in infectious disease departments is in the middle level. Psychological resilience is a mediating variable between social support and quality of life. Managers can improve the quality of life of nurses by both increasing social support and strengthening psychological resilience. Managers should pay attention to the degree of social support provided to nurses and take proactive measures to build psychological resilience so that nurses can effectively manage stress and negative emotions from work and life in order improve their quality of life.
22 September 2022 in Journal of Nursing Management
This study aimed to investigate the effect of career identity on career success among Chinese male nurses and to examine the mediating role of work engagement in this relationship. Recently, with the development of the nursing career, male nurses take up a higher share and play a more important role in the nursing team. With its own particularity and advantages, this group's stability closely relates to the future of the nursing team. Therefore, promoting the career success of the male nurses is essential to the nursing team development. The data were collected in China. A sample of 557 male nurses completed measures of career identity, work engagement and career success scale. Structural equation model was adopted to verify the research hypotheses. Career identity was significantly and positively related to male nurses' work engagement and career success (p < .01). And work engagement partially mediated the association between career identity and career success. Career identity is critical to predicting and enhancing male nurses' career success. Work engagement plays an intervening mechanism explaining how career identity promotes career success among male nurses. Nursing management should minimize the impact of the traditional concept, implement the gender equality and provide moderate care for male nurses to facilitate balanced development of gender by upgrading the management system. The administrators should carry out skill training based on male nurses' features and the need of the department. Given full play to their respective advantages, male nurses will make great progress in professional development and achieve greater career identity and work engagement. Meanwhile, the further exploration of better incentive mechanism also makes sense in improving career identity and work engagement by the reform of performance appraisal mechanism and salary adjustment according to their ability.
Background: work alienation is receiving increasing attention as a psychological risk at work, and little is known about the mechanisms of role ambiguity and work alienation in nurses in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article aims to examine how role ambiguity affects work alienation among Chinese nurses during the two years after COVID-19 pandemic and verify emotional exhaustion as mediators. Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used to recruit 281 Chinese nurses. Nurses completed online questionnaires containing demographic characteristics, role ambiguity, emotional exhaustion, and work alienation, and SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 24.0 were used for data analysis and structural equation modelling. Results: work alienation scores were (34.64 ± 10.09), work alienation was correlated with role ambiguity and emotional exhaustion (r1 = 0.521, r2 = 0.755; p < .01), and role ambiguity was positively correlated with emotional exhaustion (r = 0.512; p < .01). A mediating effect of emotional exhaustion between role ambiguity and work alienation held (mediating effect of 0.288, 95% CI: 0.221–0.369, accounting for 74.8% of the total effect). Conclusion: Role ambiguity has a significant direct effect on nurses’ feelings of alienation and exacerbates alienation through emotional exhaustion. Clarifying roles at work and being less emotionally drained are effective ways to reduce nurses’ feelings of alienation.
Aim To explore the relationships among self-efficacy, information literacy, social support and career success of clinical nurses, and identify factors influencing clinical nurses’ career success in northwestern China. Background Understanding the influencing factors of career success is important for the professional development of nurses and the improvement of clinical nursing quality. Many influencing factors of career success have been identified, but there is no large-scale research on the relationships among self-efficacy, information literacy, social support and career success of clinical nurses based on Kaleidoscope Career Model. Studies examining the association of the four factors remain limited. Methods A total of 3,011 clinical nurses from 30 hospitals in northwestern China were selected in the cross sectional survey and the response rate was 94.71%. The clinical nurses completed the online self-report questionnaires including self-efficacy, information literacy, social support rating scale and career success scale. The data were analyzed by SPSS23.0 statistical software using t-test, analysis of variance, Pearson’s correlation and multiple linear regression. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used to analyze the influencing factors of career success using Mplus 8.3. Results The career success of clinical nurses in northwestern China was at a medium level. The linear multivariate regression analysis showed that self-efficacy (β=0.513), social support (β=0.230), information support (β=0.106), information consciousness (β=-0.097), information knowledge (β=0.067), information ethics (β=-0.053), hospital grade (β=0.118), marital status (β=-0.071) and age (β=-0.037) entered regression equation of clinical nurses' career success (all P< 0.05). SEM results showed that the career success was negatively correlated with demographic characteristics, and positively correlated with social support and self-efficacy. Conclusion Demographic characteristics, self-efficacy, social support and information literacy are the influencing factors of nurses' career success which should be considered in the process of promoting nurses' career success. Implications for Nursing Management Nursing managers need to acknowledge the significance of nurses' career success both for the realization of their own value and for the improvement of clinical nursing quality. They should encourage nurses to enhance self-efficacy and render more social support through incentive policies, and foster nurses' information literacy through information technology training so as to improve their career success.
Aims: High-fat diet (HFD)-induced insulin resistance (IR) impairs skeletal muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and functions, adversely affecting human health and lifespan. Vitamin K2 (VK2) has a beneficial role in improving insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of VK2 on insulin sensitivity have not been well established. We investigated VK2's modulation of mitochondrial function to protect against IR in mice and cell models. Results: VK2 supplementation could effectively ameliorate the development of IR by improving mitochondrial function in both HFD-fed mice and palmitate acid-exposed cells. We revealed for the first time that HFD-caused mitochondrial dysfunction could be reversed by VK2 treatment. VK2 enhanced the mitochondrial function by improving mitochondrial respiratory capacity, increasing mitochondrial biogenesis and the enzymatic activities of mitochondrial complexes through SIRT1 signaling. The benefits of VK2 were abrogated in C2C12 transfected with SIRT1 siRNA but not in C2C12 transfected with AMPK siRNA. VK2 and SRT1720, a specific agonist of SIRT1, had the same effect on improving mitochondrial function via SIRT1 signaling. Thus, SIRT1 is required for VK2 improvement in skeletal muscle. Further, the beneficial effects of both VK2 and geranylgeraniol contribute to inhibited IR in skeletal muscle via SIRT1. Innovation and Conclusion: These studies demonstrated a previously undiscovered mechanism by which VK2 alleviates IR in skeletal muscle by improving mitochondrial function via SIRT1. Naturally occurring VK2 prevents IR by improving mitochondrial function through SIRT1 signaling. These results could provide a foundation to identify new VK2-based preventive and therapeutic strategies for IR.
Background: Mental health problems are critical and common in medical staff working in Intensive Care Units (ICU) even at the late stage of COVID-19, particularly for nurses. There is little research to explore the inner relationships between common syndromes, such as depression and burnout. Network analysis (NA) was a novel approach to quantified the correlations between mental variables from the perspective of mathematics. This study was to investigate the interactions between burnout and depression symptoms through NA among ICU nurses. Method: A cross-sectional study with a total of 616 Chinese nurses in ICU were carried out by convenience sampling from December 19, 2022 to January19, 2023 via online survey. Burnout symptoms were measured by Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) (Chinese version), and depressive symptoms were assessed by the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). NA was applied to build interactions between burnout and depression symptoms. We identified central and bridge symptoms by R package qgraph in the network model. R package bootnet was used to examined the stability of network structure. Results: The prevalence of burnout and depressive symptoms were 48.2% and 64.1%, respectively. Within depression-burnout network, PHQ4(Fatigue)-MBI2(Used up) and PHQ4(Fatigue)-MBI5(Breakdown) showed stronger associations. MBI2(Used up) had the strongest expected influence central symptoms, followed by MBI4(Stressed) and MBI7 (Less enthusiastic). For bridge symptoms. PHQ4(Fatigue), MBI5(Breakdown) and MBI2(Used up) weighed highest. Both correlation stability coefficients of central and bridge symptoms in the network structure were 0.68, showing a high excellent level of stability. Conclusion: The symptom of PHQ4(Fatigue) was the bridge to connect the emotion exhaustion and depression. Targeting this symptom will be effective to detect mental disorders and relieve mental syndromes of ICU nurses at the late stage of COVID-19 pandemic.