The Impact Of Subjective Social Status On Decent Work Among Nurses: A Moderated Mediation Model

As Healthy China strategy has been carried out and implemented as well as COVID-19 pandemic has spread globally,nurses,with no doubt,have played an important role in promoting Healthy China strategy and people’s wellbeing.However,medical stuff-patient conflicts and even violence injury medical is still occurring in China facing the challenge of unbalanced and inadequate development when people are yearning for a better life.Such pernicious incidents have threatened nurses’ health physically and psychologically,which may influence how they perceive their social status and further hinder the access to decent work.Decent work,which is compared with dangerous occupation,is defined as stable,safe and dignified work.Decent work has highlighted the importance of acquiring the sense of self-value and dignity during career,focusing on people’s psychological feelings and needs,which consists of five dimensions: Physically and Interpersonally Safe Working Conditions,Access to Health Care,Adequate Compensation,Hours that Allow for Free Time and Rest and Organizational Values Complement Family and Social Values.Individuals may gain basic daily needs,self-values,sense of belonging in society as well as wellbeing after achieving decent work.Thus,examining the relationships between subjective social status and decent work is of utmost significance.Drawing on Psychology of Working Theory,the current study explored the impact of subjective social status on decent work and its effect mechanism with a sample of 293 nurses from governmental hospitals in Guangdong,China.Subjective Social Status Scale(SSSS),Decent Work Scale(DWS),Work Volition Scale(WVS)as well as Work-family Conflict Scale(WFCS)were adopted to collect data and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the moderated mediation model.The result indicates that(1)significant differences were found among education background,parenting status,night-shift situation and salary in decent work;(2)subjective social status significantly predicted decent work;(3)work volition and volition played a mediating role between subjective social status and decent work;(4)work-family conflict negatively moderated the relationship between subjective social status and volition such that this relationship is weaker when work-family conflict is higher rather than lower,which supports the negatively moderated effect of workfamily conflict on the indirect effect of subjective social status on decent work through volition,coming out with a moderated mediation model.Theoretically,the study reveals that the impact of decent work can be popularized to nurses,which enriched the research of Psychology of Working Theory to some extent.Additionally,the relationships between work-family conflict and decent work makes it possible for researchers to pay attention to the effect both of work and family to nurses’ career.The results of the study also provide suggestions for organization and individuals to achieve decent work.