The Association between Korean Clinical Nurses’ Workplace Bullying, Positive Psychological Capital, and Social Support on Burnout

Abstract

Recurring shortages of nursing peoplepower in recent Korean society have impacted nursing organizations with burnout accounting for a major part of nursing staff turnover. Thus, we studied the associations between workplace bullying, positive psychological capital, and social support and whether they predict nursing burnout. We used hierarchical regression analysis to observe changes in influencing factors by sequentially entering general traits, workplace bullying, positive psychological capital, and social support from 166 clinical nurses at two hospitals. The analysis showed that being female (β = 0.18), working three shifts (β = 0.40), workplace bullying (β = 0.24), and positive psychological capital (β = −0.28) were predictors of burnout (F = 11.25, p < 0.001), explaining 44.5% of the variance. An analysis of the correlations between burnout, workplace bullying, positive psychological capital, and social support revealed that workplace bullying was positively correlated with burnout (r = 0.36, p < 0.001), and positive psychological capital (r = −0.49, p < 0.001) and social support (r = −0.37, p < 0.001) were negatively correlated with burnout. Thus, the higher positive psychological capital within an organization, the lower the level of burnout, suggesting that organizations should consider education programs to promote positive psychological capital. In addition, healthy organizational culture should be promoted by monitoring workplace bullying.