Background Nurses are prone to depression due to the particularity of their work. Depression not only harms the physical and mental health of nurses, it also threatens patient safety. Occupational stress is one of the factors that affects depression in nurses. However, little research has been done on their internal pathways. Objective To explore the mediating effect of organizational support and psychological capital between nurses' occupational stress and depression, and provide reference for the prevention and treatment of nurses' depression caused by occupational stress. Methods From June to August 2019, a stratified random sampling method was used to select 658 nurses according to departments in a third-level A hospital in Shandong Province as the research objects. Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire (ERI), Perceived Organization Support Questionnaire (POS), Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ) and Center for Epidemioligic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) were used to investigate. Pearson correlation was used to examine the correlation among the scores. Model 6 of Process 3.3 plug-in of SPSS 26.0 macro program was used to analyze the chain mediation effect by Bootstrap method. Results ERI score was positively correlated with CES-D score (r=0.499, P<0.01), and negatively correlated with POS and PCQ score (r=-0.318, -0.275, P<0.01). POS score was positively correlated with PCQ score (r=0.455, P<0.01), and negatively correlated with CES-D score (r=-0.401, P<0.01). PCQ score was negatively correlated with CES-D score (r=-0.567, P<0.01). The total effect of occupational stress on depression was 12.209 (95% CI: 10.444~13.959). Perceived organizational support (indirect effect size 0.717, 95%CI: 0.143~1.471) and psychological capital (indirect effect size 1.545, 95%CI: 0.362~3.143) played a mediating role between occupational stress and depression, respectively, and organizational support and psychological capital also played a chain mediating role between occupational stress and depression (indirect effect size was 1.334, 95%CI: 0.808~2.181), and the chain mediating effect accounted for 10.93%. |