Perceived Stress and Life Satisfaction Among Chinese Clinical Nursing Teachers: A Moderated Mediation Model of Burnout and Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Our previous study indicated that clinical teaching nurses in China suffered high levels of perceived stress and burnout, mainly because they were taking double responsibilities of nursing and teaching at the same time. The study aimed to investigate the underlying mechanisms of how and when perceived stress increased the risk of burnout and decreased life satisfaction among clinical teaching nurses. Questionnaires about perceived stress, burnout, emotion regulation, and life satisfaction were self-administered to 1,372 teaching nurses from eight tertiary military hospitals in China. Correlation and hierarchical multiple regressions were employed for data analysis. The results revealed that perceived stress had direct and indirect impacts on life satisfaction, with the principal element of burnout—emotional exhaustion—acting as a mediator. Moreover, the association between perceived stress and emotional exhaustion was moderated by emotion suppression—a key emotion regulation strategy. The negative impact of perceived stress on burnout was stronger among teaching nurses with high emotion suppression than among those with low emotion suppression. The present study contributed to a deeper understanding of the relationship between perceived stress and life satisfaction and also suggested further research into emotion regulation interventions to alleviate or eliminate the impact of perceived stress on burnout and eventually improve the life satisfaction for Chinese clinical nursing teachers.

Prevalence of burnout and related factors in nursing faculty members: a systematic review

“…A total of 2,551 nursing faculty members were enrolled in 11 studies [3][4][5]9,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. The overwhelming majority (89.97%) of nursing educators were women, and 68.78% of them were married.…”

“…Five studies reported participants' academic rank, of which 15.50% of nursing faculty members were professors and 15.63% were assistant professors [4,5,18,19,21,23]. Most studies (n=9) used the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) to examine burnout in nursing faculty members [3,4,9,[18][19][20][21][22][23]. The characteristics of the studies are presented in Supplement 1.…”

“…Thirty-two studies were removed due to an inappropriate design or results, and 18 studies were excluded due to a lack of sufficient information after reviewing the full text of the articles. Finally, 11 studies [3][4][5]9,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] remained in this systematic review.…”

“…Of the 11 studies included in this review [3][4][5]9,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23], 10 had high-quality studies [3][4][5]9,17,18,[20][21][22][23] and 1 study had fair quality [19]. Four studies did not report the selection process [4,[17][18][19], 3 studies did not report research limitations [4,18,19], and 7 studies did not report funding sources or conflicts of interest [4,[17][18][19][20][21]23] (Table 1).…”

“…According to a literature review, burnout includes 3 dimensions: emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and reduced personal accomplishment (PA) [8]. The results of the study by Xu et al [9] showed that approximately 85% of nursing faculty members had moderate and high levels of burnout. According to the evidence, burnout syndrome is more common in professionals who work directly with people [10].…”