Introduction
Nursing shortages have become a pressing issue worldwide [
1,
2]. There are only 2.7 nurses per 1,000 people nationwide in China, less than half the average worldwide and far below the ratio in other developed countries such as the United States (8.3) and Switzerland (17.5). Lin (2020) found that as many as 45.4% of nursing students in China intend to leave the nursing profession [
3]. Nursing students abandoning the nursing profession upon graduation exacerbates nursing workforce shortfalls, increases the financial burden on healthcare organizations [
4], reduces the quality of patient care [
5], and decreases patient satisfaction [
6]. Understanding the influential factors and underlying mechanisms are especially important for identifying ways to reduce turnover among student nurses.
The final clinical practicum (FCP), which occurs just before graduation, provides a real-world context through which nursing students can acquire clinical skills; it can also help graduating students develop a positive attitude regarding their future nursing careers [
7]. Nonetheless, nursing students often report dissatisfaction with their clinical placements, and the result is an intention to leave [
8]. Several past studies have found that newly graduated nurses’ turnover intention was influenced by factors such as authentic leadership, organizational identification, occupational coping self-efficacy [
9], empowerment [
10], work-life fit, and work-life interference [
11]. Explorations of abusive supervision have indicated that it is a prevalent problem in healthcare organizations [
12,
13]. However, little research has focused on the effects of abusive supervision among nursing students during their FCP. Reducing stress induced by abusive supervision will improve the retention of nursing students, a change that is vital for medical organizations. In addition, very few research studies have sought to investigate the moderated mediating functions operating between abusive supervision and turnover intention, particularly those moderators that could buffer the harmful effects of abusive supervision on student nurses’ turnover intention. Therefore, the potential relationship between abusive supervision and student nurses’ turnover intention during the FCP has yet to be analyzed.
The present research builds upon the literature and expands our understanding of the negative consequences of abusive supervision in relation to nursing students’ intention to work as a nurse after graduation. Abusive supervision is a negative leadership construct that has numerous adverse effects [
14,
15]. We drew upon the conservation of resources theory (COR) to explore emotional exhaustion as a potential mechanism for understanding why abusive supervision might lead to nursing students’ intention to leave the nursing profession [
16]. We also examined the perceived nurse-patient relationship’s ability to act as a moderator, buffering the negative effects of abusive supervision on turnover intention due to its ability to supply the resources needed by nursing students.
Discussion
The goal of this study was to examine the effect of abusive supervision on an intention to leave the nursing profession among nursing students engaged in their FCP, as well as explore the mediating role of emotional exhaustion and moderating effect of the nurse-patient relationship. The results support our belief that abusive supervision increases students’ intention to leave the nursing profession, and that the relationship is mediated by emotional exhaustion. In this process, the nurse-patient relationship was found to play a moderating role. Specifically, the effect of abusive supervision on turnover intention in the high nurse-patient relationship group was found to be weaker than what was exhibited by the low group.
The results show that abusive supervision was positively correlated with an intention to leave the nursing profession, as well as that the former directly influencing the latter. Previous studies have confirmed the effect of abusive supervision on an intention to leave the nursing profession [
44‐
46]. However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the effect of abusive supervision on an intention to leave the nursing profession among nursing students engaged in their FCP; this is essential in order to highlight the critical role of the supervisor (i.e., clinical teaching staff) in enhancing student nurses’ retention. Abusive supervision may pose a threat to student nurses and make them insecure; they may perceive themselves as being treated as outgroup members [
47]. Thus, consistent pressure from supervisors is likely to push student nurses towards negative reactions such as an intention to leave the nursing profession [
48]. The results indicate that student nurse supervisors play an important role in building a positive or negative workplace climate, which can in turn either strengthen or harm students’ workplace sense of belonging. Therefore, abusive supervision is costly, as it results in an increase in an intention to leave the nursing profession.
Our results also show that abusive supervision positively but indirectly influenced student nurses’ intention to leave the nursing profession, and emotional exhaustion played a mediating role [
11]. In other words, abusive supervision can augment emotional exhaustion in student nurses and thus increase their likelihood of forming an intention to leave the profession, a result that can be explained by the COR [
49]. Abusive supervision is a form of workplace stress that drains student nurses’ mental resources. When such students work in a stressful environment caused by their supervisor’s behavior, they may experience a threat to their resources and feeling of tiredness, resulting in high emotional exhaustion [
50]. According to the COR theory, individuals seek to obtain, retain, and protect their resources and minimize the threat of resource loss [
51]. Thus, emotionally exhausted student nurses may feel helpless, decreasing their desire to remain in the nursing profession. Consequently, emotional exhaustion was shown to be a strong predictor of an intention to leave among the student nurses studied. These results support the notion that abusive supervision has a broader impact on newcomers (in this context, nursing students engaged in clinical practice), not only within companies but also in medical organizations.
Moreover, the results also show that the nurse-patient relationship moderated the linkage between abusive supervision and emotional exhaustion. Though the influence of abusive supervision on turnover intention has been confirmed in previous studies [
47,
52], there has been little research exploring the factors that might buffer its effects. To our knowledge, this is the first to provide empirical evidence of the effect of the nurse-patient relationship on the correlation between abusive supervision and an intention to leave the nursing profession among nursing students engaged in clinical practice. Therefore, it is a novel addition to the extant literature. The results are consistent with the JDR model [
53]. Positive nursing-patient relationships are a job resource that contributes to the alleviation of role stress. An increase in the quality of the nurse-patient relationship was found to weaken the predictive effect of abusive supervision on emotional exhaustion. Student nurses with negative nurse-patient relationships rated stronger negative reactions to abusive supervision than did individuals with more positive relationships. Patient respect and trust is an important resource to help student nurses handle the detrimental impacts of stress and stay focused on their role [
31]. Previous studies have focused more on the impact of poor nurse-patient relationships on an intention to leave the nursing profession, while this study confirmed the positive impact of positive nurse-patient relationships on positive psychological resources for nursing students engaged in clinical practice.
Implications
Our results will improve the greater understanding of the organizational and individual factors affecting student nurses’ intention to leave the nursing profession, thus assisting instructors with developing effective intervention strategies to retain talented nursing personnel. First, the results highlight key practical implications for healthcare organizations seeking to avoid the negative consequences of abusive supervision by clinical practice supervisors. Nurturing positive relationships among supervisors and nursing students, as well as mutual respect and support, and creating an ideal clinical learning environment are central to decreasing nursing students’ voluntary turnover. Healthcare organizations should adopt these findings and implement programs designed to educate, train, and support clinical teaching staff to avoid abusive supervision. Second, nurse educators should incorporate emotion regulation into their specific intervention strategies for handling emotional exhaustion resulting from abusive supervision. Third, a patient-nurse relationship based on trust has critical importance for the intention to remain. Such relationships allow student nurses to feel respected and trusted by their patients. Nurse educators should develop training to improve nurse-patient communication and trust skills for nursing students.
Limitations
There are several limitations of the current study that need to be considered. First, a cross-sectional design was adopted, and this restricted the analysis to the causal relationship between abusive supervision and an intention to leave the nursing profession. Longitudinal research should be conducted in the future, particularly as longitudinal studies are rarely adopted in the area of abusive supervision in clinical practice. Second, the data were collected through the self-reporting of nursing students via an online survey, which may have led to response bias based in social desirability. Other measurements should be adopted to draw stronger conclusions about the relationship between abusive supervision and its consequences. Third, this study did not explore the effects of different types of abusive supervision on the intention to leave the nursing profession. Different types of abusive supervision should be distinguished to confirm what particular types of abusive supervision can be appraised as most stressful.
Conclusion
This study represents a first look at abusive supervision in healthcare organizations, using a sample of student nurses in China. We proposed and tested a novel model for abusive supervision’s direct, indirect, and relaxation effects on the intention to leave the nursing profession among nursing students engaged in clinical practice. The present study’s findings emphasize the important role of abusive supervision, emotional exhaustion, and nurse-patient relationships in nursing students’ intention to leave the profession. The results indicate that abusive supervision significantly affects nursing students’ intention to leave. Emotional exhaustion is also significantly related to nursing students’ intention to leave. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion indirectly affects the relationship between abusive supervision and nursing students’ intention to leave the nursing profession. This research adds to this research domain by examining the moderating role of nurse-patient relationships based on trust and confirms that such nurse-patient relationships could moderate the association between abusive supervision and an intention to leave the nursing profession. Consequently, patient support may enable student nurses to feel cared about, significant, and capable, and thus help eliminate the harmful effects of abusive supervisors for those engaged in the FCP.
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