The Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience in the Relationship between Religious Coping and Burnout among Nurses

Abstract

Nurses are healthcare professionals who are in constant interaction with both the patients and their teammates. This state of constant interaction increases their propensity to burnout. However, with the pandemic, the risk of burnout has increased even more due to issues such as contagiousness, the threat of death, increased workload, uncertainty of the whole process, having to go through long periods of time with the patients while being separated from their family increasing their stress levels. While struggling with all these stress factors, nurses are boosted by other factors which support their ability to cope. It is important to examine religious coping tendencies as a factor that boosts or weakens their psychological resilience. When examining the studies, it has been determined that there is no study on the interaction between burnout, psychological resilience, and positive/negative religious coping levels among nurses. The aim of this research is to determine the interaction between burnout, psychological resilience, and positive/negative religious coping levels in nurses, one of the working groups where burnout is high. The main purpose of the research is to examine the mediating role of psychological resilience in the relationship between positive/negative religious coping and burnout syndrome. It was also discussed whether the marital status and age groups of the individuals caused any difference in these variables. The study is created based on the relational screening model with the participation of 250 nurses working in health facilities. Personal Information Form, Maslach Burnout Scale, Brief Psychological Resilience Scale, and Religious Coping Scale were administered to the participants. Data analysis of the participants reached by snowball sampling method was carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics 26 and Smart PLS Version 3.3.2 package software. Among nurses, it is seen that marriage has a positive effect on positive religious coping. It can be said that married nurses have a higher positive religious coping tendency than singles. These findings confirm the first part of the H1 hypothesis which says “Married nurses use positive religious coping more than singles”. On the other hand, no significant effect of marital status on negative religious coping, psychological resilience, and burnout syndrome was detected. Therefore, the second part of the H1 hypothesis and the whole of the H2 hypothesis are not supported by the findings. When the effects of age on religious coping, resilience, and burnout syndrome in nurses were examined, no significant effect on positive religious coping, negative religious coping, and psychological resilience was detected. On the other hand, there is a negative correlation between age and burnout syndrome. It can be said that as the age levels of nurses’ increases, their tendency to burnout decreases. The findings show that while all of H3 and the first part of H4 are rejected by the data, the second part of H4 which says “Burnout decreases with age.” is supported. When the effects of positive religious coping on other variables in nurses are examined, no statistically significant positive or negative effect on psychological resilience and burnout syndrome is observed. Therefore, it is not statistically possible for resilience, which is one of the research items of the study, to play a mediating role between positive religious coping and burnout syndrome. Form this point of view, it can be said that the H5 and H8 hypotheses are rejected. Contrary to positive religious coping, it is seen that negative religious coping affects both psychological resilience and burnout syndrome in nurses. Negative religious coping negatively affects resilience. In other words, it can be said that as the negative religious coping tendency of nurses increases, their psychological resilience tends to decrease. There is an inverse relationship between psychological resilience and burnout syndrome. As the resilience levels of nurses decrease, their tendency to burnout syndrome increases. Therefore, the resilience factor plays a mediating role between the other two variables. To explain this indirect effect, negative religious coping reduces the psychological resilience of nurses and therefore indirectly increases their level of burnout. The effect of negative religious coping on burnout syndrome is statistically significant. 0.077 part of the positive effect with a coefficient of 0.208 is indirectly realized through psychological resilience. According to these findings, it can be said that the H6, H7, and H9 hypotheses are supported.