ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1632014
This article is part of the Research TopicNurse Fatigue: Investigating Burnout, Health Risks, and Prevention StrategiesView all 12 articles
The Impact of Workplace Violence on Burnout among Nurses: A Moderated Chain Mediation Model
Provisionally accepted
- 1***, Deyang, China
- 2People’s Hospital of Deyang City, Deyang, Sichuan Province, China
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Background Nurse burnout is a growing global concern, often intensified by workplace violence (WPV). Yet, the mechanisms linking WPV to burnout remain unclear. Objectives This study aimed to develop and test a model to examine the effect of WPV on nurse burnout, with resilience and emotional labor as sequential mediators and perceived organizational support as a moderator. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted from March to May 2025 among 549 clinical nurses from eight tertiary hospitals in Sichuan Province, China. Data were collected using structured questionnaires distributed via the Wenjuanxing online platform, covering demographic characteristics, WPV, resilience, emotional labor, burnout, and perceived organizational support. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 26.0 and PROCESS v4.1. Mediation and moderation effects were tested using the bootstrap method with 5,000 resamples while controlling for demographic variables. Results Among 549 nurses, 45.4% reported moderate to severe burnout. WPV significantly predicted burnout (β=0.269, p<0.001). Resilience (β=0.092, 95% CI: 0.064–0.123) and emotional labor (β=0.031, 95% CI: 0.012–0.053) partially mediated this relationship, with a significant sequential mediation effect (β=0.024, 95% CI: 0.014–0.036). POS moderated the effect of emotional labor on burnout (β=−0.114), and also reduced the indirect effects of WPV on burnout through both mediators. Conclusion WPV heightens burnout risk among nurses by undermining resilience and increasing emotional labor. A stable sequential mediation pathway was identified. Perceived organizational support effectively buffers these effects and represents a crucial external resource for mitigating burnout. Targeted interventions should address violence prevention, emotional regulation training, and organizational support enhancement.
Keywords: Nurses, burnout, Workplace Violence, resilience, Emotional labor, perceived organizational support, chain mediation, moderated mediation
Received: 18 Jul 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zeng, Xie, He and Zhou. 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:
Zhi Zeng, ***, Deyang, China
SuMei Zhou, People’s Hospital of Deyang City, Deyang, Sichuan Province, China
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