Abstract
Traumatic events such as a pandemic shatter the assumption of the workplace as a safe place. Nurses face risks of life-threatening infection, which can create psychological distress. Quality of care for infected patients depends on mental well-being of nurses which calls for research on predictors of stress among health care workers. Responding to a call for research on the effects of leadership styles on psychological distress during traumatic events, this paper uses the theoretical lens of social exchange theory and contributes to literature on relationships between inclusive leadership, psychological distress, work engagement, and self-sacrifice. Participants of this cross sectional study included 497 registered nurses from five hospitals in Wuhan. Data were collected with temporal separation through an online questionnaire. Partial least-squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze data. Results show inclusive leadership has a significant negative relationship with psychological distress. Work engagement mediates this relationship, and nurses’ self-sacrificial behavior moderates it. Findings indicate inclusive leadership style serves as a sustainable mechanism to reduce psychological distress during pandemics. It can operationalize the delivery of mental health support in real-time in work settings. Results provide empirical support for social exchange theory through high work engagement to help control psychological distress among nurses.
Highlights
Chinese nurses have been exposed to life-threatening occupational risks during the COVID19 pandemic since it was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan City, P.R
35.0 49.3 15.7 100 studies on psychological distress (Eriksen et al, 2006; Stuke and Bermpohl, 2016), control variables were studied by splitting data into groups based on working hours, age, gender, education, and experience; a bootstrap was run using multi-group analysis (MGA) in smartPLS to examine whether these factors caused differences in responses
The relationship was plotted through smartPLS simple slope option to show effects at −1 standard deviation (SD) and +1 SD compared with a mean SD value of selfsacrifice
Summary
Chinese nurses have been exposed to life-threatening occupational risks during the COVID19 pandemic since it was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan City, P.R. China. There were five new cases reported in Wuhan during the week of May 2020, 1 month after the lockdown restrictions were lifted (Xinhua, 2020); bringing the overall confirmed infections to 88,423 and 4,634 reported deaths (China Daily, 2020). More than 3,300 health care workers in China (Moazzami et al, 2020) and at least 90,000 worldwide (Mantovani, 2020) have been infected while treating patients during this outbreak. A recent multinational study found that 5.3% of health care workers screened positive for moderate to very severe depression, 8.7% for moderate to extremely severe anxiety and 2.2% for moderate to extremely severe stress during the COVID-19 pandemic (Chew et al, 2020)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
