Research on the relationship between nurses' compliance with standard precautions, servant leadership and emotional exhaustion: A cross-sectional survey.

AIM: This study aimed to analyse the effects of servant leadership on nurses' emotional failure and compliance with standard precautions and to explore the moderating effect of individual resilience. DESIGN: A cross-sectional survey. METHODS: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from October 9 to November 1, 2022. The convenience sampling method was used to collect questionnaire data from 924 clinical nurses in a third-class general hospital in Chongqing, China. RESULTS: The emotional exhaustion and compliance with standard precautions were at the general level. Servant leadership mediated by emotional exhaustion had a significant positive predictive effect on compliance with standard precautions. Personal resilience played a negative moderating role in the relationship between servant leadership and emotional exhaustion. For nurses with low resilience, servant leadership had a greater impact on emotional exhaustion. CONCLUSION: The current compliance with standard precautions for clinical nurses is not high due to emotional exhaustion. The level of servant leadership can alleviate nurses' emotional exhaustion and improve compliance with standard precautions. Especially for nurses with low personal resilience, the care and support of department leaders are needed. IMPACT: We found that the compliance with standard precautions is not high, and the link between emotional exhaustion, servant leadership and compliance with standard precautions provides a basis for further patient care. NO PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: There was no patient or public involvement. IMPACT STATEMENT: Nurses are the key population for hospital infection prevention and control, and their level of compliance with standard precautions is of great significance for hospital infection prevention and control. However, in practice, nurses' compliance with standard precautions is generally low. Most of the previous studies on nurses' compliance with standard precautions were conducted from the perspective of individual nurses, based on the staff's 'knowledge, belief, and action' to study the current status of compliance with standard precautions and the factors affecting adherence, with less attention paid to the influence of psychological, environmental, and organizational factors. Therefore, the study focuses on the impact of servant leadership and emotional exhaustion on standard precautionary adherence, which is of great significance for good care management at the organizational level. It also explored how the impact of servant leadership on emotional exhaustion varies across levels of resilience, which is important for accurately identifying different types of nursing staff and targeting assistance.

Risk and prediction of job burnout in responding nurses to public health emergencies.

BACKGROUND: In public health emergencies, nurses are vulnerable to adverse reactions, especially job burnout. It is critical to identify nurses at risk of burnout early and implement interventions as early as possible. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey of the hospitals in Xiangyang City was conducted in January, 2023 using stratified cluster sampling. Anonymized data were collected from 1584 working nurses. The Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R) and the Chinese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) were used to evaluate the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and burnout of nurses in public health emergencies. Logistic regression analysis was established to screen for risk factors of burnout, and a nomogram was developed to predict the risk of burnout. A calibration curve and the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were used to validate the nomogram internally. RESULTS: This study showed that only 3.7% of nurses were completely free of PTSD during a public health emergency. We found that PTSD varied by age, marital status, procreation status, length of service, employee status, and whether working in the ICU. The nurses aged 30 ~ 40 years old, single, married without children, non-regular employees, worked for less than three years or worked in the ICU had higher levels of PTSD. Regarding the prevalence of burnout, 27.4%, 48.5%, and 18.6% of nurses had a high level of emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization (DP), and diminished personal accomplishment (PA), respectively. There, 31.1% of nurses had more than two types of job burnout. The number of night shifts, the type of hospital, marital status, and the severity of PTSD were all associated with higher rates of exhaustion among nurses. As a graphical representation of the model, a nomogram was created and demonstrated excellent calibration and discrimination in both sets (AUC = 0.787). CONCLUSIONS: This study confirmed the PTSD and burnout are common problems for in-service nurses during public health emergencies and screened out the high-risk groups of job burnout. It is necessary to pay more attention nurses who are single and working in general hospitals with many night shifts, especially nurses with severe PTSD. Hospitals can set up nurses' personal health records to give timely warnings to nurses with health problems, and carry out support interventions to relieve occupational stress.

Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Bone Age Assessment to Improve the Accuracy and Consistency of Physicians With Different Levels of Experience.

Background: The accuracy and consistency of bone age assessments (BAA) using standard methods can vary with physicians' level of experience. Methods: To assess the impact of information from an artificial intelligence (AI) deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN) model on BAA, specialists with different levels of experience (junior, mid-level, and senior) assessed radiographs from 316 children aged 4-18 years that had been randomly divided into two equal sets-group A and group B. Bone age (BA) was assessed independently by each specialist without additional information (group A) and with information from the model (group B). With the mean assessment of four experts as the reference standard, mean absolute error (MAE), and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were calculated to evaluate accuracy and consistency. Individual assessments of 13 bones (radius, ulna, and short bones) were also compared between group A and group B with the rank-sum test. Results: The accuracies of senior, mid-level, and junior physicians were significantly better (all P < 0.001) with AI assistance (MAEs 0.325, 0.344, and 0.370, respectively) than without AI assistance (MAEs 0.403, 0.469, and 0.755, respectively). Moreover, for senior, mid-level, and junior physicians, consistency was significantly higher (all P < 0.001) with AI assistance (ICCs 0.996, 0.996, and 0.992, respectively) than without AI assistance (ICCs 0.987, 0.989, and 0.941, respectively). For all levels of experience, accuracy with AI assistance was significantly better than accuracy without AI assistance for assessments of the first and fifth proximal phalanges. Conclusions: Information from an AI model improves both the accuracy and the consistency of bone age assessments for physicians of all levels of experience. The first and fifth proximal phalanges are difficult to assess, and they should be paid more attention.

Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Work-Family-School Role Conflicts Scale among nurses.

OBJECTIVE: To translate and validate the Chinese version of the Work-Family-School Role Conflicts Scale (WFSRCs-S) among nurses with multiple roles. METHODS: A sample of 233 registered nurses pursuing an advanced degree was recruited from 8 university hospitals in 5 cities in China from March to July 2016. The original scale of WFSRCs-S was translated into Chinese and revised to reflect cultural meaning, using standard translation methodology, and its reliability and validity were assessed. RESULTS: The content validity index of the 12-item WFSRCs-S-Chinese was 0.83, and the item level of content validity index ranged from 0.79 to 1.00. The exploratory factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution (work-school-to-family role conflict, family-school-to-work role conflict, and work-family-to-school role conflict) and explained 71.9% of the total variance for WFSRCs-S-Chinese. The Cronbach's α coefficients for the total scale and the three sub-scales were 0.87, 0.79, 0.78, and 0.87. The confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the measurement model was satisfied, and the test-retest reliability of WFSRCs-S-Chinese was 0.85. The WFSRCs-S-Chinese score was positively associated with burnout (r = 0.36, P < 0.001) and negatively related to role-related social support (r = -0.18, P = 0.046), thereby establishing concurrent validity. CONCLUSION: The reliability and construct validity of the WFSRCs-S-Chinese suggest that this scale could be useful to assess inter-role conflicts among nurses with multiple roles in China.

Impact of the Family Environment on the Emotional State of Medical Staff During the COVID-19 Outbreak: The Mediating Effect of Self-Efficacy.

During the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the medical staff was facing severe work pressure, which led to a negative emotional state. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the family environment and the emotional state of the medical staff members during the COVID-19 outbreak. Due to the importance of self-efficacy in regulating mental health, the mediating role of self-efficacy in the association between family environment and emotional state was also explored. A cross-sectional survey was performed, using an online questionnaire, on 645 medical staff who participated in the epidemic prevention and control tasks during the COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing. Family environment, self-efficacy, anxiety, and depressive symptoms were measured by the Family Environment Scale-Chinese Version (FES-CV), the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-7 (GAD-7), and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), respectively. Correlation analysis and mediating effect analysis were used to explore the relationships between them. First, a higher prevalence of anxiety (39%) and depressive (33%) symptoms were confirmed among the medical staff. Second, the symptoms of anxiety and depression were negatively correlated with the dimensions of cohesion and expressiveness and positively correlated with the dimensions of conflict in the FES-CV scale. Third, self-efficacy significantly mediated the association between the family environment and anxiety symptoms (P < 0.001) as well as the family environment and depressive symptoms (P < 0.001). These findings show that a negative family environment was the main predictor of symptoms of anxiety and depression in the medical staff during the COVID-19 outbreak. Furthermore, we found that self-efficacy played a critical mediating role between the family environment and the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Our study also indicates that improvements in the family environment benefit the mental health care of the medical staff, and high self-efficacy enhances this effect.