The Mediating Role of Perceived Stress in the Relationship between Health-Promoting Lifestyles with Illness Anxiety in the Medical Staff of Al-Ghadir Hospital

The medical staff are always fighting against diseases and are in contact with the patients, and psychological helplessness, including depression and anxiety, has been reported in many staff working on the front lines of fighting diseases. The present study aimed to determine the relationship between health-promoting lifestyles and illness anxiety with the mediating role of perceived stress in the medical staff of Al-Ghadir Hospital.

The current research is an applied and descriptive correlational type in terms of nature. The statistical population of this research was the medical staff of Al-Ghadir Hospital in Tabriz, Iran, in 2022 (315 people). The statistical sample of the research was determined by using a simple random sampling method of 236 people. In this research, three standard questionnaires, including the Taylor and Cox (1998) illness anxiety scale, Cohen et al.'s (1983) perceived stress questionnaire, and Walker et al.'s (1997) health-promoting lifestyle questionnaire, were used to collect data. The data were analyzed using partial least squares path analysis with PLS-3 software. 

Descriptive findings showed that 188 participants (79.7%) were female, and 48 (20.3%) were male. The test of the research model showed that the structural model of the relationship between health-promoting styles and illness anxiety with the mediation of perceived stress had a good fit. Model analysis showed that in the direct path, health-promoting lifestyles had a negative and significant relationship with illness anxiety (β=0.144; t=2.418), and indirectly, the relationship between health-promoting styles and illness anxiety through the mediating variable of perceived stress was negative and significant (Z=3.541). Perceived stress explained the relationship between health promotion style and illness anxiety by 47% (VAF=0.47).

The findings of this research showed that perceived stress could negative and significantly mediate the relationship between health-promoting styles and illness anxiety in a selected sample of people referring to Al-Ghadir Hospital in Tabriz, Iran.