How Safety Climate Influences the Willingness to Stay of Nursing Staff during the COVID-19 Outbreak.

Ying Wang,Yiming Ma,Changyong Liang,Yuguang Xie,Shuping Zhao

doi:10.3390/healthcare9040451

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 in China at the beginning of 2020 has made the problems that the aged care agency face with large mobility and high turnover of aged nursing staff become more serious. Aiming at this problem, this paper incorporates psychological capital and social panic into the model from the perspective of the organizational safety climate and constructs a theoretical model of the mechanism of the effect on nursing staff’s willingness to stay in the context of the outbreak. Through a questionnaire survey in an aged care agency in Anhui Province, a total of 321 valid questionnaires were collected for empirical analysis. The results show that: (1) the safety climate of the organization has a significant positive impact on the transactional psychological capital and interpersonal psychological capital of nursing staff in the aged care industry and their willingness to stay; (2) transactional psychological capital and social panic have a significant positive impact on the willingness to stay of nursing staff, while interpersonal psychological capital has no significant impact on the willingness to stay; (3) the mediating role of transactional psychological capital and interpersonal psychological capital between the safety climate and the willingness to stay is established, and the moderating role of social panic between psychological capital and willingness to stay is also established. Finally, based on the research conclusions, corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward to deal with the problems that occur in special periods.

Highlights

At present, China is accelerating the implementation of the “Healthy China 2030” strategy to promote the health of the whole population before 2030
To cut off the possible spread of the new coronavirus, aged care institutions across the country implemented the requirement whole staff to stay on-site 100% of the time. This condition is a huge challenge for nursing staff in aged care agencies: a closed service environment increases the intensity of their daily nursing care services, and greatly increases their psychological pressure, and will significantly impact the willingness of nursing staff in the aged care industry to stay in their jobs
In Model 2, the results show that transactional psychological capital acts as a mediator between the safety climate and the willingness of nursing staff in the aged care industry to stay

Summary

Introduction

China is accelerating the implementation of the “Healthy China 2030” strategy to promote the health of the whole population before 2030. The nature of the work and the intensity of the labor of nursing staff in the aged care industry lead to low job satisfaction and a high employee turnover rate. To cut off the possible spread of the new coronavirus, aged care institutions across the country implemented the requirement whole staff to stay on-site 100% of the time. This condition is a huge challenge for nursing staff in aged care agencies: a closed service environment increases the intensity of their daily nursing care services, and greatly increases their psychological pressure, and will significantly impact the willingness of nursing staff in the aged care industry to stay in their jobs. Interpersonal psychological capital includes four aspects: modesty and sincerity, tolerance and forgiveness, gratitude and dedication, and respect and courtesy

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion