Predictors of cognitive emotion regulation strategies: Iranian nurses

Nurses have a challenging job and encounter more stressful situations. In response to these situations, they demonstrate adaptive or maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERS). As there is a lack of literature regarding the factors predicting the selection of CERS, the present study aimed to investigate the role of age, sex, marital status, working experience, type of ward, and education level in predicting these strategies in Iranian nurses.

A descriptive correlational study was conducted to examine predictive factors' emotion regulation strategies used by 193 nurses who worked at six hospitals under the supervision of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences in 2018. The study population were selected by stratified random sampling method. Data were collected by two questionnaires, one demographic questionnaire and the other was Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire conducted by Garnefski (α = 0.8). Data analysis was performed using correlation and multiple linear regression.

The results showed that there is a significant relationship between the "type of ward" and "age" with adaptive and maladaptive strategies. In the multiple linear regression model, two variables of age (P = 0.03) and type of ward (P = 0.04) were able to predict 23% of variance CERS.

Based on the results of this study, health-care providers and hospital managers should pay attention to factors related to adaptive and maladaptive CERS.