Change Fatigue, Job Crafting and Associated Factors Among Nurses: A Multicentre Cross-Sectional Study

To explore the current level of change fatigue among nurses in Hubei Province, China and to examine its correlation with job crafting and other influencing factors.

A multicentre cross-sectional online survey among 22,030 nurses from 79 hospitals across 17 cities in Hubei Province.

In January 2024, a self-designed general information questionnaire, change fatigue scale and job crafting scale were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics, univariate analyses and multiple linear stepwise regression analyses were performed using IBM SPSS 26.0 and R 4.4.1 software for data analysis.

A total of 21,588 valid questionnaires were collected, resulting in a response rate of 97.99%. Nurses had a change fatigue score of 23.62 (SD = 7.98), which was negatively correlated with job crafting and its three dimensions (all p < 0.001). Income satisfaction, health condition, relational crafting, age, cognitive crafting, type of hospital, professional title, experience of changing employment and task crafting were predictors of nurses' change fatigue, collectively explaining 27.00% of the total variance.

Both change fatigue and job crafting among nurses were moderately high, and they exhibited a negative correlation. Nurses experiencing poor job crafting, dissatisfaction with income and health, older age, employment in non-tertiary hospitals, holding intermediate titles and having job-changing experiences were more susceptible to change fatigue.

With the ongoing reform of the medical system, there is a growing need for increased attention to nurses' change fatigue. Nursing managers should pay more attention to change fatigue among nurses and actively identify its influencing factors, and implement organisational readiness strategies, including securing resource support and enhancing communication and feedback mechanisms, to mitigate the negative influence of change.

Study methods and results were reported in accordance with the STROBE checklist.

No patient or public contribution. All data information came from the nurses.