Professional Identity Of Nurses And Its Relationship With Work Stressor And Burnout

Objective: This paper reports the development process of professional identity assessment and findings of a quantitative study related among nurse professional identity, work stressor and burnout. And try to explore the relationship among them, with the purpose of forming an effective way to ease work strain and maintaining nurse's physical and mental health.Methods: With sociology and psychology related theory, literature review, expert interview and consulting, developed the professional identity scale and tested the validity and reliability of it (study 1). With stratified and cluster sampling method, 524 nurses were surveyed by self-made scale, nurse work stressors scale and job burnout scales to explore the relationship among them (study 2).Results:①Initial scale development: With the help of qualitative study, literature review and related questionnaire, the initial structure of the scale were developed. Focus on self-concept, 3 domains, 8 factors and 46 items were developed.②Formal scale development: 224 nurses were involved in this survey, then it was optimized by item analysis, factor analysis.Then developed the professional identity scale, it consist of 5 factors and 30 items, rating by 5 socres.The higher the score is , the better their professional identity is.③Descriptive results: The professional identity of surveyed nurses is in the middle (3.23±0.500), working pressure is moderate (79.64±14.671), the greatest pressure coming from the distribution of time and work. Burnout level is higher than the M and Hangzhou norms, especially in the emotion exhaustion and diminished personal accomplishment two dimensions.④Correlation analysis : Individual characteristics affected nurse professional identity respectively, take job title for example, the higher their title is, the higher their professional identity level is. Besides, work pressure, job burnout and professional identity related significantly.Conclusions:①Professional identity scale of nurses can be applied to our clinical nurses and can provide an effective assessment tool for intervention study of this field.②Nurse professional identity, work stressors and job burnout affected each other significantly.③Professional identity played a positive role in reducing work strain and tiredness.