ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
This article is part of the Research TopicNurse Fatigue: Investigating Burnout, Health Risks, and Prevention StrategiesView all 28 articles
The relationship between OR nurse-parents' WCBA and occupational fatigue based on Latent Profile Analysis: the mediating of psychological detachment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong Provincial Hospital, Jinan, China
- 2Shandong First Medical University - Tai'an Campus, Tai'an, China
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Aim: Explore the relationship between OR nurse-parents' WCBA and occupational fatigue through Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), and analyze the mediating effect of psychological detachment. Methods: This study constituted a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from a prior study involving OR nurse-parents in 15 tertiary hospitals in Shandong Province, China. Inclusion criteria were: (1) registered nurse with >1 year of OR experience; (2) parent of at least one child aged 0-18 years; (3) voluntary informed consent. Exclusion criteria were: (1) temporary staff or interns; (2) on extended leave during the study; (3) major comorbidities. A two-part analytical strategy was used. First, latent profile analysis identified subgroups by WCBA, psychological detachment, and occupational fatigue, with multinomial logistic regression then examining predictors of profile membership. Second, a parallel mediation analysis tested psychological detachment as a mediator between WCBA and occupational fatigue. Results: Data came from the 724 included OR nurse-parents. LPA revealed a three-profile model: "low WCBA-high psychological detachment-low occupational fatigue group (22%)", 2 "moderate WCBA-moderate psychological detachment-moderate occupational fatigue group (50%)", and "high WCBA-low psychological detachment-high occupational fatigue group (28%)". Multivariate analysis identified working over 10 hours daily as a risk factor for the high-risk group. Furthermore, Psychological detachment partially mediated the WCBA-occupational fatigue relationship across all occupational fatigue dimensions, accounting for 17.73%-31.52% of total effects. Conclusions: Mediation analysis confirmed that psychological detachment partially mediates the relationship between WCBA and occupational fatigue. LPA of WCBA, psychological detachment, and occupational fatigue revealed a three-profile solution among operating room nurse-parents in Shandong Province. A critical finding of LPA is that WCBA moderates the relationship between occupational fatigue and psychological detachment, creating a dual effect: while psychological detachment generally reduces occupational fatigue, its benefit diminishes or reverses under moderate WCBA, likely due to unclear communication expectations. Therefore, effective interventions must address both aspects: managing afterhours connectivity to reduce its intrusion and proactively promoting genuine psychological detachment to mitigate fatigue.
Keywords: occupational fatigue, Nurse, Work connectivity behavior after hours, Psychological detachment, latent profile analysis, Mediating effect
Received: 20 Sep 2025; Accepted: 02 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Qu, Hu, Wan, Lv, Cheng, Zhao 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:
Guangying Wan
Jinbao Mao
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