ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Healthcare Professions Education
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1590280
Association between family functioning and academic burnout among vocational college nursing students: mediating role of academic selfefficacy
Provisionally accepted
- 1Henan Vocational College of Nursing, Henan, China
- 2Quzhou College of Technology, Quzhou, China
- 3Chengdu Polytechnic, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
- 4Changji Vocational and Technical College, Changji, China
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Introduction: Academic burnout is not uncommon and interferes with the role shift from nursing students to qualified nurses, aggravating a shortage of workforce in global healthcare system. However, there is currently a lack of research examining the relationship between family functioning, academic self-efficacy, and academic burnout in nursing students. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship among family functioning, academic self-efficacy, and academic burnout among nursing students.This cross-sectional survey recruited 2847 nursing students from a three-year vocational school located in Henan province in eastern China and used an online questionnaire to measure the participants' basic information, family functioning, academic self-efficacy and academic burnout. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation, multiple linear regression and mediation analyses were used.The mean (SD) score of academic burnout among nursing students was 53.98 (10.87). Family functioning (r=-0.39, p<0.001) and academic self-efficacy (r=-0.64, p<0.001) were negatively correlated with academic burnout. Family functioning (r=0.46, p<0.001) was positively correlated with academic self-efficacy. At the same time, academic self-efficacy plays a partial mediating role (indirect effect=-1.009; 95%CI, -1.114 to -0.910) in the influence of family functioning on academic burnout.Nursing students with higher level of family functioning may have a stronger sense of academic self-efficacy, which could lead to a lower level of academic burnout. This finding provides important guidance for educational administrators to formulate targeted strategies to prevent academic burnout of nursing students.
Keywords: Academic burnout, family functioning, Academic self-efficacy, nursing students, Mediating effect
Received: 19 Mar 2025; Accepted: 06 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang, Liu, Zhou, Miao and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xuejuan Liu, Changji Vocational and Technical College, Changji, China
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