Nurses commonly experience negative experiences after experiencing a patient safety event, triggering a domino effect on the nurses themselves, subsequent patients, and healthcare organisations, thus requires urgent attention.
To explore the mediating role of psychological capital and coping styles between neurotic personality and negative experiences of nurses' second victims, and to provide theoretical guidance for nursing administrators to develop targeted strategies to mitigate negative experiences of nurses' second victims.
In June–July 2023, a general information questionnaire, a neurotic personality subscale, the Chinese version of the Second Victim Experience and Support Scale, the Nurses' Psychological Capital Questionnaire, and the Coping Styles Questionnaire were used to conduct an online survey of 213 nurses' second victims and structural equation modelling was constructed to clarify the relationship between these elements.
Psychological capital and coping styles partially mediated the relationship between neurotic personality and negative experiences in the nurses' second victims, with a total indirect effect value of 0.203 and a total effect value of 0.303, for a mediating effect of 33.00%.
Neurotic personality and immature coping styles negatively predict the degree of negative experience, while psychological capital and mature coping styles positively predict the degree of negative experience. Psychological capital and coping styles play a partial mediating role between neurotic personality and negative experience.
After a patient safety incident, nursing managers can mitigate the negative experiences of nurses' second victims in patient safety incidents by reducing their neurotic personality tendencies, enhancing their level of psychological capital, and guiding them to adopt mature coping styles.
No patient or public contribution.