Psychological and Organizational Factors Associated With Professional Commitment Among Newly Graduated Psychiatric...

Newly graduated psychiatric nurses often experience challenges during the transition to professional practice, which may influence their professional commitment. Although workplace anxiety represents an important psychological factor, organizational factors such as spiritual leadership and error management climate may also contribute to variations in professional commitment. However, the relationships among these psychological and organizational factors remain insufficiently understood.

To examine the associations of workplace anxiety, spiritual leadership, and error management climate with professional commitment among newly graduated psychiatric nurses using generalized additive models (GAMs) and random forest (RF) models to integrate explanatory and predictive analyses.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 264 newly graduated psychiatric nurses recruited from three tertiary psychiatric hospitals in Tianjin, China. Data on workplace anxiety, spiritual leadership, error management climate, and professional commitment were collected using validated questionnaires. A GAM was applied to examine adjusted associations and interaction patterns, while RF analysis was performed to evaluate the predictive contribution of candidate factors.

Error management climate showed a significant positive association with professional commitment in the GAM analysis (F = 8.24, p = 0.004) and demonstrated the greatest predictive contribution in the RF model according to permutation-based variable importance. Spiritual leadership did not show a significant main association with professional commitment (F = 3.70, p = 0.055), but its association with professional commitment varied according to levels of error management climate (Bonferroni-adjusted p = 0.013). Workplace anxiety was not independently associated with professional commitment in the GAM analysis (F = 0.39, p = 0.533) but showed relatively high predictive contribution in the RF. GAM and RF generated predictions showed strong agreement (r = 0.842).

Professional commitment among newly graduated psychiatric nurses is associated with the combined contribution of psychological experiences and organizational conditions. Error management climate demonstrated relatively greater predictive contribution within the RF framework, while workplace anxiety and spiritual leadership may contribute to professional commitment in context-dependent ways.

Nursing managers should consider strengthening error management climate, optimizing leadership practices, and providing psychological support to facilitate professional adaptation and promote professional commitment among newly graduated psychiatric nurses.