RESUMO
Background: About 9 million nurses will be needed by 2030. To face these unprecedented times, governments/institutions focus on educating as many nursing students as possible. This strategy is clouded by burnout and lack of both health and well-being among students and by the fact that personality is one of the major determinants of these health outcomes. Nevertheless, recent findings show that personality is a complex adaptive system (i,e., nonlinear) and that combinations of people's temperament and character traits (i.e., joint personality networks) might provide further information to understand its development, academic burnout, and lack of health and well-being. Aims: Our aims were to investigate the linear relationship between nursing students' personality, burnout, health, and well-being; investigate the linear mediational effects of personality and burnout on health and well-being; and investigate differences in these health outcomes between/within students with distinct joint personality networks (i.e., nonlinear relationships). Method: Swedish nursing students (189 women, 29 men) responded to the Temperament and Character Inventory, The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey for Students, and the Public Health Surveillance Well-Being Scale. We conducted correlation analyses and Structural Equation Modeling and, for the nonlinear relationships, Latent Profile Analysis and Latent Class Analysis for clustering and then Analyses of Variance for differences in health outcomes between/within students with distinct personality networks. This study was not pre-registered. Results: High levels of health and well-being and low burnout symptoms (low Emotional Exhaustion, low Cynicism, and high Academic Efficacy) were associated with low Harm Avoidance and high Self-Directedness. Some personality traits were associated with specific health outcomes (e.g., high Self-Transcendence-high Emotional Exhaustion and high Persistence-high Academic Efficacy) and their effects on health and well-being were mediated by specific burnout symptoms. Cynicism and Emotional Exhaustion predicted low levels of health and well-being, Academic Efficacy predicted high levels, and Cynicism lead both directly and indirectly to low levels of health and well-being through Emotional Exhaustion. We found two joint personality networks: students with an Organized/Reliable combination who reported being less emotionally exhausted by their studies, less cynical towards education, higher self-efficacy regarding their academic work/skills, and better health and well-being compared to nursing students with an Emotional/Unreliable combination. Conclusions: The coherence of temperament-character, rather than single traits, seems to determine students' health outcomes. Thus, nursing education might need to focus on helping students to develop professional skills and health-related abilities (e.g., self-acceptance and spiritual-acceptance), by supporting self-awareness.
RESUMO
The aim of this pilot study was to preliminary test the psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Measure of Parasocial Relationships (MMPR), a self-report that assess people's attitude (affect, cognition, and behavior) towards social media figures and to what extent people perceive that media figures influence their daily life decisions (e.g., consumption, exercise, nutrition). In short, the MMPR measures how and to what extent people are committed to such one-sided relationships and interactions through social media platforms. Besides factor structural analyses (four different models) and internal consistency, we also tested the MMPR's concurrent validity by investigating if, as hypothesized, the association between commitment to parasocial relationships and self-esteem is mediated by its positive association to social comparison. Participants (N = 259) answered to the MMPR, the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. As expected, the MMPR loaded in four dimensions and had good internal consistency (e.g., Cronbach's Alphas were between .66-.75 for the four dimensions and .85 for the whole measure). The bifactor model with correlated factors had the best fit indexes (CFI = .95, RMSEA = .07). Moreover, the direct effect of MMPR was positive on social comparison (ß = .18, p < .01), the direct effect of social comparison on self-esteem was negative (ß = -.51, p < .001), and the indirect effect of MMPR on self-esteem was negative (ß = -.09, p < .01). In sum, our results suggest that parasocial relationships through social media platforms consist of four necessary and correlated dimensions (A: Affective; B: Behavioral; C: Cognitive; and D: Decisional). Moreover, the MMPR successfully assessed that high level of commitment with parasocial relationships are positively associated with the tendency to compare oneself to others, which in turn leads to low levels of self-esteem. Hence, the MMPR has sound psychometric properties and is a good candidate for further analyses.
RESUMO
Background: One of the challenges of the 21st century is the high turnover rate in the nursing profession due to burnout and mental illness. From a biopsychosocial perspective, an individual's personality is an important vulnerability-resilience factor that comprises four temperament traits (i.e., a person's emotional reactions) and three character traits (i.e., self-regulation systems). Indeed, different personality profiles are associated to different coping strategies and health outcomes. Objective: We investigated and mapped the temperament and character of Swedish newly graduated and employed nurses' in relation to the Swedish general population and an age-matched sub-sample. Design: In this cross-sectional study, nurses self-reported their personality (Temperament and Character Inventory) at the beginning of their employment. Setting: The data collection was conducted at a hospital in the South of Sweden. Participants: A total of 118 newly graduated and employed nurses (Mage = 25.95±5.58) and 1,564 individuals from the Swedish general population participated in the study. Methods: We calculated T-scores and percentiles for all seven personality dimensions using the Swedish norms (N = 1,564). The profiles were calculated by combining high/low percentiles scores in three temperament dimensions (Novelty Seeking: N/n, Harm Avoidance: H/h, and Reward Dependence: R/r) and in the three character dimensions (Self-Directedness: S/s, Cooperativeness: C/c and Self-Transcendence: T/t). Results: Regarding T-scores, the nurses reported moderately lower Novelty Seeking (> 0.5 SD), slightly higher Harm-Avoidance (about 0.5 SD), moderately higher Persistence (> 0.5 SD) and Reward Dependence (> 0.5 SD), and extremely lower Self-Directedness (> 1 SD). The prevalence of the most common temperament profiles among the nurses (Swedish general population in brackets) were: 39.80% [10.90%] Cautious (nHR), 21.20% [10.90] Reliable (nhR), and 15.30% [16.50%] Methodical (nHr). The prevalence of the most common character profiles among the nurses were: 31.40% [4.90%] Dependent (sCt), 25.40% [14.40%] Apathetic (sct), and 19.50% [8.80%] Moody (sCT). Conclusions: The analyses of the personality profiles showed that Low Novelty Seeking (79%), high Harm Avoidance (65%) high Reward Dependence (80%), low Self-Directedness (95%), and low Self-Transcendence (60%) were more prevalent among the newly graduated and employed nurses. This may partially explain newly graduated nurses' difficulties at work and high turnover rate. After all, a well-developed character is of special importance when working with patients with serious and terminal illness or under large global crises, such as the current pandemic. Hence, both education at universities and development at work need to be person-centered to reduce stress levels and promote positive self-regulation strategies.