ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Intensive Care Medicine and Anesthesiology
Mediating effect of moral sensitivity in the relationship between mental workload and patient privacy protection among operating room nurses in China: a cross-sectional study
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Anesthesiology, Chongqing University Cancer Hospital, Chongqing, China
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Background: Patient privacy protection is a fundamental ethical obligation in healthcare, particularly in operating rooms where anesthesia and complex surgical procedures increase patients' vulnerability. Mental workload and moral sensitivity have been identified as key factors influencing ethical behavior, yet their interrelationships in the context of privacy protection among operating room nurses remain unclear. Objectives: To investigate the associations between mental workload, moral sensitivity, and patient privacy protection among operating room nurses in China, and to examine the mediating role of moral sensitivity in this relationship. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted from May to July 2025 in tertiary hospitals across Chongqing, Beijing, Harbin, and Sichuan Province. Using convenience sampling, a total of 573 valid responses from operating room nurses were analyzed using the Patient Privacy Scale, the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire-Revised Chinese Version, and the NASA Task Load Index. Pearson correlation and mediation analyses were performed using SPSS 26.0 with PROCESS macro (Model 4), applying bootstrapping with 5000 resamples to estimate indirect effects. Results: The mean scores for patient privacy protection, moral sensitivity, and mental workload were 82.384 ± 5.169, 45.775 ± 6.053, and 45.450 ± 14.826, respectively. Mental workload was negatively correlated with both patient privacy protection (r = −0.655, p < 0.001) and moral sensitivity (r = −0.575, p < 0.001), while moral sensitivity was positively correlated with patient privacy protection (r = 0.506, p < 0.001). Mediation analysis indicated that moral sensitivity partially mediated the association between mental workload and privacy protection, accounting for 14.98% of the total effect. Conclusion: Greater mental workload is associated with lower moral sensitivity and lower patient privacy protection among operating room nurses. Moral sensitivity partially mediates this relationship, underscoring the need for interventions aimed at alleviating workload and strengthening moral sensitivity to enhance privacy protection practices.
Keywords: patient privacy protection, Mental Workload, Moral sensitivity, mediation effect, Operating room nurses, China
Received: 22 Sep 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tan, Yang, Zeng, Han, Hu, Yang and Ma. 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:
Jing Yang
Hongli Ma
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