Factors influencing career success of clinical nurses in northwestern China based on Kaleidoscope Career Model: Structural equation model

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 3011 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 analysed 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 analyse 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 = .513), social support (β = .230), information support (β = .106), information consciousness (β = −.097), information knowledge (β = .067), information ethics (β = −.053), hospital grade (β = .118), marital status (β = −.071) and age (β = −.037) entered regression equation of clinical nurses' career success (all P < .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.