Correlation between resilience and social support and anxiety in obstetric nurses

In May 2017, 190 nurses from three hospitals in Tai’an were selected by the convenient sampling method. Inclusion criteria are as follows: registered nurses; nurses in obstetrics nursing work for more than 1 year; and the willingness to participate in this study.

The method of questionnaire investigation was used in this study; unified questionnaires were provided to the nursing department. The nurses were asked to truthfully fill out the questionnaire according to the instructions, and at the day of recovery, a total of 190 questionnaires were distributed; of those, 183 questionnaires were recovered, with an effective recovery rate of 96.3%.

After all the data were audited, a database was set up and analyzed by SPSS 23.0 software, including descriptive statistics analysis, variance analysis, t-test, correlation analysis, and regression analysis.

All the 183 finally enrolled nurses (female, aged 20–50 years; mean 34.1±7.24 years) engaged in obstetric care for 1–26 years (average 8.26±6.72 years) and other basic conditions were included in this study (Table 1).

The 183 obstetric nurses’ age, education, work experience, job title, the type of single factor variance analysis engaged in, differences in the type of work, and the score of psychological resilience were analyzed (P<0.05), and the difference was statistically significant (Table 5).

There were significant differences in total scores of resilience and total scores of anxiety and social support (P<0.01), which were statistically significant (Table 6).

Table 5 shows that there is a difference in the score of work type and resilience score (P<0.05), and the difference is statistically significant. This is consistent with the studies by domestic scholars such as Yang et al.,¹³ Wang et al.,¹⁴ and others. Different work types have different working states such as the contract nurses often shift, low welfare, occupation development is limited, promotion, go out the opportunity to study less, low return, high pay, psychological pressure ratio relative to the nurses more; therefore, nursing managers should pay attention to working conditions, different types of work of nurses, the balance of different types of work and nurses’ mental state, should return in wages and benefits, income, job prospects, better maintenance of obstetric nurses’ physical and mental health, so as to better optimize the quality of nursing service, with greater enthusiasm to work.

Obstetric nurse resilience scores and anxiety scores were significantly negatively correlated (P<0.01), namely the higher the resilience score, the lighter the anxiety symptom, and negatively related to personal ability and anxiety resilience of obstetric nurses (P<0.05), namely the higher the ability of individual scores, the lighter the anxiety symptom; sense of control and obstetric resilience have a significant negative correlation with anxiety (P<0.01), that is the better the sense of control, the lighter the anxiety symptom. Resilience is difficult when individuals face great pressure,¹⁵ and in the study by the domestic scholar Wang et al.,¹⁶ it is shown that good adaptation ability can improve the resilience level of obstetric nurses, especially to enhance their ability to deal with problems and cultivate the sense of self-control, and can reduce the degree of depression and anxiety. Hospital managers should also pay attention to psychological health of obstetric nurses and make reasonable arrangements of nursing work to avoid the long time work overload, pay attention to emotional management of obstetric nurses, and reduce the incidence of anxiety of nurses.

The resilience score and social support score of obstetric nurses were positively related (P<0.01), namely, the higher the degree of social support, the higher the score of psychological resilience; the resilience of individual ability score and total score of social support were positively correlated (P<0.05), namely, the higher the degree of social support, the higher the score of resilience ability; the control the feeling score and social support score were positively related (P<0.05), namely, the higher the degree of social support, the higher the score of psychological sense of control; elasticity to bear negative emotions and social support scores were significantly correlated (P<0.01), namely the higher the score, the higher the score with negative emotional resilience; acceptance with the change score and the social support score were positively correlated (P<0.01), namely, the higher the degree of social support, the higher the score to accept change. The higher the degree of social support, the greater the intensity of individual stress relief, the stronger the adaptability, which is consistent with the studies by the domestic scholar Si.¹⁷ Therefore, to improve the nurses’ social support, with respect to friends and family, the hospital and the patient’s understanding is helpful to improve their psychological resilience and mental health level, increase their social identity, and increase working enthusiasm.