Occupational Stress and the Quality of Life of Nurses in Infectious Disease Departments in China: The Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience

AIM: We aim to explore the impact of occupational stress on the quality of life of nurses in infectious disease departments and to explore the mediating role of psychological resilience on this impact. BACKGROUND: Sudden public health events and the prevalence of infectious diseases give nurses in infectious disease departments a heavy task load and high occupational stress, which can affect their quality of life, and which is closely related to the quality of clinical care they provide. There are few existing studies on occupational stress, psychological resilience, and the quality of life of nurses in infectious disease departments. METHODS: We collected data from infectious-disease-specialized hospitals or infectious disease departments of general hospitals in China. In total 1,536 nurses completed questionnaires: the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Brief Scale. We use a structural equation model to test the mediating role of the psychological resilience in the relationship between occupational stress and quality of life. RESULTS: Among 1,536 participants, 88.2% experienced an effort-reward imbalance. The average scores for psychological resilience and quality of life were 56.06 (SD = 14.19) and 51.80 (SD = 8.23), respectively. Our results show that occupational stress is negatively correlated with psychological resilience (r = −0.28, p < 0.01) and quality of life (r = −0.44, p < 0.01). In addition, we find that psychological resilience is positively correlated with quality of life (r = 0.55, p < 0.01) and that the indirect effect of occupational stress on quality of life through psychological resilience is significant (β = −0.036, 95% CI: 0.027 to 0.426), indicating at least a partial mediating role of psychological resilience. CONCLUSION: A high proportion of nurses in infectious disease departments felt that their jobs’ effort-reward imbalance was high. These nurses’ scores for psychological resilience were in the middle level among Chinese people generally, but their quality of life was lower than the Chinese norm. We conclude that occupational stress has an important impact on their quality of life, and psychological resilience plays a partial mediating role on this impact. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Hospital managers can benefit from paying attention to the occupational stress of nurses and helping to improve the quality of life of nurses by alleviating this occupational stress and improving psychological resilience.