RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Psychiatric nurses often face patient safety incidents that can cause physical and emotional harm, even leading to s econd victim syndrome and staff shortages. Rumination-a common response after nurses suffer a patient safety event-may play a specific role between the second victim experience and turnover intention. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for supporting psychiatric nurses and retaining psychiatric nursing resources. OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to explore the associations among second victim experience, rumination, and turnover intention in psychiatric nurses and confirm how second victim experience influences turnover intention through rumination and its subtypes. METHODS: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was adapted to survey 252 psychiatric nurses who experienced a patient safety incident at three hospitals in China between March and April 2023. We used the Sociodemographic and Patient Safety Incident Characteristics Questionnaire (the Chinese version of the Second Victim Experience and Support Tool), the Event-Related Rumination Inventory, and the Turnover Intention Scale. Path analysis with bootstrapping was employed to accurately analyze and estimate relationships among the study variables. RESULTS: There was a positive association between second victim experience and turnover intention. In addition, both invasive and deliberate rumination showed significant associations with second victim experience and turnover intention. Notably, our results revealed that invasive and deliberate rumination played partial mediating roles in the relationship between second victim experience and turnover intention in psychiatric nurses. DISCUSSION: The negative experience and turnover intention of the psychiatric nurse second victims are at a high level. Our results showed that invasive rumination positively mediated the relationship between second victim experience and turnover intention, and deliberate rumination could weaken this effect. This study expands the knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the effect of the second victim experience on turnover intention. Organizations must attach importance to the professional dilemmas of the psychiatric nurses' second victims. Nurse managers can reduce nurses' turnover intention by taking measures to reduce invasive rumination and fostering deliberate meditation to help second victims recover from negative experiences.