The mediating role of psychological capital on the relationship between authentic leadership and nurses' caring behavior: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Caring behavior among nurses would have an impact on patient outcomes. External organizational job resources and personal internal psychological resources are correlated to nurses' caring behavior. Authentic leadership and psychological capital were shown to be correlated with nurses' caring behavior in previous studies. However, the relationships among the three are nevertheless unclear. This study aimed to examine if psychological capital could act as a mediator between nursing managers' authentic leadership and nurses' caring behavior. METHODS: In December 2021, a total of 3,662 nurses were recruited from 37 hospitals in Anhui Province, China. They filled out online surveys, including general demographic information, the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire, the Psychological Capital Questionnaire, and the Caring Behavior Inventory. Structural Equation Modeling and the bootstrapping procedure were used to examine the mediating role of psychological capital. RESULTS: The scores of authentic leadership, psychological capital, and caring behavior of 3,495 nurses were 52.04 ± 13.24, 96.89 ± 17.78, and 104.28 ± 17.01, respectively. Psychological capital significantly mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and nurses' caring behavior (ß = 0.378, p < 0.001, 95% confidence interval: 0.350 ~ 0.402), which made up 78.75% of the total impact (0.480). CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggested that nursing managers should develop an authentic leadership style, which can effectively improve nurses' caring behaviors toward patients in clinical practice. Meanwhile, nursing leaders should strengthen nurses' psychological evaluation and training, and promote nurses' caring behavior in clinical settings.

The mediating role of psychological capital on the relationship between authentic leadership and innovative behaviour among Chinese nurses.

AIM: To explore the mediating role of psychological capital between authentic leadership and innovative behaviour among Chinese nurses. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. METHODS: In December 2021, online surveys were delivered among nurses from 37 hospitals in Anhui Province by convenience sampling approach. The data was collected using the Chinese version of the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire, Nurse Psychological Capital Questionnaire and Nurse Innovative Behaviour Scale. The structural equation model and bootstrap test examined the mediating role of psychological capital between authentic leadership and innovative behaviour. RESULTS: 3495 Chinese nurses from 37 Anhui Province hospitals participated in this study. The mean item score of authentic leadership was 3.25 (SD 0.83), psychological capital was 4.85 (SD 0.89), and innovative behaviour was 2.82 (SD 0.84). Authentic leadership perceived by nurses, psychological capital, and innovative behaviour were statistically significant and positively correlated with each other (r = 0.524 ~ 0.806, p < 0.01). Psychological capital significantly mediated the association between authentic leadership and innovative behaviour (ß = 0.449, p < 0.001), and its mediating effect accounted for 76.75% of the total effect. CONCLUSION: Results suggest the importance of developing nurse managers' authentic leadership to foster nurses' psychological capital and innovation behaviour.

Mechanisms of Zn(II) binded to collagen and its effect on the capacity of eco-friendly Zn-Cr combination tanning system.

The eco-friendly combination tanning process has been developed to reduce chromium in existing researches, which is based on zinc tanning agents. This can be considered as a less-chrome substitute for current tanning process. To gain deeper understanding of the binding mechanisms of zinc-collagen interaction, which are affected by tanning pH, experiments have been carried out. Analysis in this paper reveals how chemical bonds from the collagen's main function groups combine with zinc. XPS and NIR data was analyzed for further understanding of where the zinc binding sites lie on collagen fibers at different pH. The results indicate that high pH is helpful to amino-binding sites while low pH promotes carboxyl-binding sites on collagen fibers. Furthermore, from the effect of Zinc-chrome combination tanning, we can see that the new method reduces the chromium dosage in tanning process compared to the conventional chrome tanning method.