Relationships of perceived stress with emotional exhaustion and life satisfaction and moderating effect of emotion regulation in head nurses from affiliated hospitals of military medical universities

Abstract

Objective To investigate the relationships of perceived stress with emotional exhaustion and life satisfaction, and probe the moderating roles of emotion regulation in the relationships. Methods Convenience sampling survey was carried out in 142 head nurses in the affiliated hospitals of 3 Military Medical Universities in January 2020. Chinese Perceived Stress Scale (CPSS), Dimension of Emotional Exhaustion (EE) in Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Service Survey (MBI-HSS), Emotion Regulation Scale (ERS) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) were applied to investigate their perceived level of stress, EE, emotion regulation and satisfaction with life. Results ① The total score of perceived stress was 24.49±6.88. When the score of 26 was taken as the cut-off value of CPSS, there were 47.18% head nurses under the risk of stress. ②Head nurses with different age, marital status, professional title, educational background and service length had significant differences in perceived level of stress (P < 0.05). ③Perceived level of stress was positively correlated with emotional exhaustion (r=0.45, P < 0.01), but negatively correlated with cognitive reappraisal and life satisfaction (r=-0.35, -0.43, P < 0.01). ④Expressive suppression moderated the relationship between perceived stress and emotional exhaustion. Conclusion For the head nurses from the military medical universities, their higher perceived level of stress is closely correlated with emotional exhaustion and life satisfaction. Rational emotion regulation strategies will help to reduce emotional exhaustion, improve life satisfaction and promote mental health.

Keywords

• perceived stress
• emotional exhaustion
• emotion regulation
• life satisfaction
• head nurse
• military medical university