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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1514612
A Daily Positive Work Reflection Intervention for Psychological Distress Among Chinese Nurses: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Cardiology, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei Province, China
- 2 Department of Otolaryngology, Sinopharm Dongfeng General Hospital, Shiyan, China
- 3 School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
- 4 School of Sociology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Background: Chinese nurses experience high level of psychological distress, which negatively impacts nurses' mental health. A daily positive work reflection intervention is a widely disseminated employee management program, designed to improve employee well-being. The program has shown promising results in management, but has rarely been tested in healthcare settings, such as among nurses.Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of a daily positive work reflection intervention for psychological distress among Chinese nurses.Methods: This study used a switching replication design and randomly allocated 205 nurses to two groups (i.e., the experimental group and the waitlist control group) with three waves of measurement at pre-treatment, immediate post-treatment (T2), and immediate post-treatment (for the control group after intervention switch, T3) for changes in psychological distress. Results: In addition to significant within group improvements over time for both groups, OLS linear regression with Full Information Likelihood Estimation revealed a statistically significant between group treatment effects across outcome domains, including psychological distress, b = 22.60, p < 0.001, g = 11.34, somatic symptoms, b = 6.79, p < 0.001, g = 6.56, depressive symptoms, b = 8.15, p < 0.001, g = 8.19, and anxiety symptoms, b = 7.69, p < 0.001, g = 8.23. Conclusions: Results suggest that a daily positive work reflection intervention is a feasible and promising intervention for decreasing Chinese nurses' psychological distress. The study used a convenience sample which led to a concern of external generalizability, and the study had limited evaluation of long-term change.
Keywords: daily positive work reflection intervention, Nurse, psychological distress, randomized controlled trial, switching replication design
Received: 28 Oct 2024; Accepted: 10 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Xiao, Zhang and Zhang. 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:
Hui Zhang, School of Sociology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
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