The Correlation of Psychological Flexibility, Type D Personality and Perceived Social Support with Job Tension in Nurses

Nursing is one of the occupations with high job tension which should pay special attention to its predicting factors for nurses' physical and mental health and reducing their job tension. According to this, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the correlation of psychological flexibility, type D personality and perceived social support with job tension in nurses.

The method of this research was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population included all nurses working in public hospitals in Rasht. A sample of 318 people was selected using available sampling method from October to November 2019. Psychological flexibility (Bond and et al., 2011), type D personality (Denollet, 2005) and perceived social support (Zimet and et al., 1998) questionnaires were used to collect data. Data were analyzed by using Pearson correlation and stepwise regression.

The results showed that psychological inflexibility (r=0.20) and the components of negative affect (r=0.30) and social inhibition (r=0.19) from type D personality have a positive and significant correlation with job tension in nurses (P>0.01). While, there is a negative and significant (P>0.01) relationship between perceived social support and job tension (r=-0.41). The results of regression analysis also showed that perceived social support (β=-0.412) and the component of negative affect from type D personality (β=0.221)  were able to explain 21% of the variance of job tension.

According to the results, it can be concluded that ,psychological flexibility, perceived social support and type D personality can predict job tension in nurses. Therefore, health practitioners can develop and implement appropriate training programs to reduce job tension in nurses by focusing on these psychological variables.