Investigating the relationship between personality traits of hardiness and perfectionism with stress and psychosomatic symptoms: a cross-sectional study among nurses in Iran

Abstract

Background Medical and health sector employees are always exposed to physical and psychological risk factors, which affects their personal, social and professional performance. It’s important to explores the intricate interplay between personality traits, stress levels, and psychosomatic symptoms among nurses as one of the most sensitive jobs in society. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigating the relationship between the personality traits of hardiness and perfectionism with stress and psychosomatic symptoms among nurses. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted among 340 nurses in Mazandaran, Iran in 2022–2023. The instruments utilized to collect data included four questionnaires, namely Cubasa Hardiness Questionnaire, Tehran Multidimensional Perfectionism Questionnaire, Nursing Stress Questionnaire and Takata and Sakata Psychosomatic Questionnaire. The structural equations modeling was used for path analysis. All analyzes were done using SPSS V.25.0 and AMOS V.24.0 software. Results The results of the present study revealed that the prevalence of psychosomatic symptoms and stress in nurses was high, and all path coefficients were significant, except for the paths of commitment to stress, challenge to psychosomatic symptoms, self-orientation to psychosomatic symptoms, and community-orientation to psychosomatic symptoms. The results showed that in the final model, the highest coefficient (0.807) is assigned to the other-oriented perfectionism path to psychosomatic symptoms. The weakest coefficient (-0.276) is related to the path of the hardiness component of the challenge to stress. The current research examined the fitting of the proposed model and the suitability of the proposed model was confirmed. Conclusion The results of the present study revealed that psychological factors such as personality traits of hardiness, and perfectionism are among the important and influencing parameters on occupational stress, and psychosomatic symptoms and as a result the efficiency and effectiveness of nurses in working environments. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to implement mitigating and control measures to reduce the mentioned risk factors among nurses in medical settings.