Resilience and occupational burnout among Chinese clinical nurses: the mediating effect of organizational silence
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Background Occupational burnout has an impact on nurses’ occupational wellbeing, the stability of the nursing team, and the safety of patients. Clinical nurses are the key to the operation of medical institutions, but due to factors such as resilience, organizational silence and other conditions, they are more likely to burn out. Therefore, it is necessary to know the factors associated with nurses’ occupational burnout and how these factors interact with each other, so as to develop targeted interventions to reduce the number of nurses who burn out. Previous studies have explored the relationship between organizational silence, resilience and occupational burnout, but few have studied the mediating effect of organizational silence in this relationship, especially in the Chinese healthcare context. Objective This study aimed to examine the mediating effect of organizational silence in the relationship between resilience and occupational burnout among clinical nurses. Methods Researchers recruited 1,650 nurses from 10 public hospitals in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of China between January and June 2026, by means of convenience sampling, and 1,590 nurses completed the questionnaires (response rate: 96.36%). The General Demographics Questionnaire, the Nurse Organizational Silence Evaluation Questionnaire (NOSEQ), the Brief Resilience Coping Scale (BRCS), and the Maslach Burnout Inventory General Survey (MBI-GS) were utilized for questionnaire surveys. Moreover, the mediating effect was examined using SPSS and PROCESS Model 4. Results The scores for organizational silence, resilience and occupational burnout were (45.67 ± 14.32), (15.04 ± 2.74), (49.40 ± 15.53). Correlation analysis revealed that resilience was negatively correlated with occupational burnout ( r = −0.50, p < 0.001), resilience was negatively correlated with organizational silence ( r = −0.43, p < 0.001), organizational silence was positively correlated with occupational burnout ( r = 0.50, p < 0.001). Mediation effect analyses indicated that organizational silence partially mediated the relationship between resilience and occupational burnout, with a mediation effect value of 30.42% of the total effect. Conclusion This study confirmed significant correlations among organizational silence, resilience and occupational burnout among Chinese clinical nurses. Moreover, organizational silence exerted a partial mediating effect on the association between resilience and occupational burnout. Nevertheless, causal inferences should be drawn with caution, as this research adopted a cross-sectional design.
Source: Frontiers in Psychology
Language: English
Topic: Stress and Burnout Research
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,801
OpenAlex ID: W7225616207