ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1567252
This article is part of the Research TopicWorld Mental Health Day: Mental Health in the WorkplaceView all 22 articles
Relationships between Emotional Intelligence, Mental Resilience, and Adjustment Disorder in Novice Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Study in China
Provisionally accepted
- Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Guangzhou, China
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Objective: This study aims to explore the relationship among adjustment disorder, emotional intelligence, and mental resilience in newly licensed registered nurses.Method: This study adopts a cross-sectional design to explore the factors influencing work adaptation and mental resilience among newly graduated nurses with less than three years of clinical experience. The research was conducted by distributing a comprehensive, multi-part questionnaire to a targeted sample of new nurses across various healthcare settings. The questionnaire was meticulously designed to capture a holistic view of the participants' personal, professional, and psychological profiles， which included the Personal and Professional Characteristics Questionnaire, the Work Adaptation Difficulties Scale, the Mental Resilience Scale, and the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale.Results: A total of 445 new nurses completed the questionnaire. The mean age of participants was 24.50 ± 2.77 years. Adjustment disorder negatively affected mental resilience (r = -0.460**, P < 0.001) and emotional intelligence (EI) (r = -0.380**, P < 0.001). Conversely, mental resilience positively influenced emotional intelligence (r = 0.714**, P < 0.001). The emotional perception (EP) dimension was negatively correlated with adjustment disorder (r = -0.396**, P < 0.001) but positively associated with increased mental resilience (r = 0.702**, P < 0.001). Conclusion: Findings suggest that higher levels of emotional intelligence and psychological resilience contribute significantly to enhanced work adaptation and the mitigation of psychological stress among nurses. Furthermore, job satisfaction appears to be a key predictor in the onset of adjustment disorders. These results underscore the necessity for head nurses and hospital administrators to adopt proactive measures aimed at promoting the psychological well-being of nursing professionals. Targeted interventions that foster emotional resilience and job satisfaction may serve as effective strategies to prevent maladaptive adjustment outcomes in high-stress clinical environments.
Keywords: new nurses1, emotional intelligence2, mental resilience3, adjustment disorder4, mental health5
Received: 26 Jan 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Peng, Xu, Yang, Zhang, Lai, Liu, Xie, Ma and Mao. 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:
Xuexia Ma, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Guangzhou, China
Xiaoqun Mao, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Guangzhou, China
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