The Moderating Effects of Self-Care on the Relationships between Perceived Stress, Job Burnout and Retention Intention in Clinical Nurses

This study determines the importance of nurses' self-care by identifying its effects as a moderating variable on the relationships between perceived stress, job burnout, and retention intention in clinical nurses. Hence, 174 clinical nurses who worked at two university hospitals and one general hospital located in Seoul, South Korea, participated in this study. As the hospitals required the use of recruitment notices, convenience sampling methods were adopted to recruit volunteers. The data were collected using the perceived stress scale, the burnout assessment tool, the nurse retention index, and the self-care assessment worksheet. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the general characteristics of participants, and t-test and analysis of variance were conducted for comparisons. Moderated multiple regression was conducted to verify the moderating effects of self-care on the relationships between perceived stress and retention intention and between job burnout and retention intention. The results revealed that the effect of perceived stress on retention intention and the moderating effect of self-care on the relationship between perceived stress and retention intention were not significant, whereas job burnout had a direct effect on retention intention, and self-care had a positive moderating effect on job burnout. Therefore, it is necessary to consider an instructional program on the importance of self-care and conduct campaign activities at the organizational level. Moreover, various support structures should be provided at the organizational level such that nurses can reduce their levels of job burnout.