Predicting Professional Identity Among Chinese Nurses Using the Job Demands-Resources Model: A Comparative...

To integrate regulatory emotional self-efficacy and career calling into the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and use machine learning to identify model-derived predictors of nurses' professional identity.

Nurses' professional identity is essential for workforce stability, commitment and nursing management. However, limited research has examined professional identity by jointly considering job demands, job resources and personal psychological resources within a predictive modelling framework. Addressing this gap may help identify integrated management priorities for strengthening nurses' professional identity.

Convenience sampling with hospital-specific quotas was used to recruit nurses from five tertiary public hospitals in Zhejiang Province. Data were collected from July to October 2024, yielding 1006 valid responses. The dataset was randomly split into training and testing sets. Boruta feature selection was performed within the training set, and six machine-learning models were compared using cross-validation. Model performance was evaluated using MAE, RMSE, R², repeated cross-validation, bootstrap confidence intervals and a Taylor diagram. SHAP was used to interpret predictor contributions.

Of 23 candidate predictors, 11 were retained. Random forest performed best on the test set (MAE = 8.49, RMSE = 10.97, R² = 0.668; repeated 10-fold cross-validated R² = 0.661 ± 0.075). The strongest predictors were career calling, self-efficacy in managing positive affect, development opportunities and social support. Higher personal and job resources were associated with higher predicted professional identity, whereas job demands were associated with lower predicted values.

Within the integrated JD-R model and machine-learning framework, nurses' professional identity was mainly predicted by personal psychological resources and job resources. These findings are predictive and do not imply causality.

Nursing managers may strengthen nurses' professional identity by enhancing personal psychological resources, improving job resources and addressing job demands, particularly career calling, positive affect self-efficacy, development opportunities, social support, operational demands, emotional demands and work-family conflict.