Investigating Predictors of Nurses' Professional Quality of Life and the Role of Cyberbullying: A Cross-Sectional Study.
Digital technology has brought many advantages to healthcare, but it has also given rise to a new form of worker abuse called "cyberbullying." This type of bullying can happen anytime and can greatly harm workers' mental health. Since "professional quality of life" is vital for how well the healthcare system functions and there is not much research on how this connects to online bullying in Iranian nursing, it is important to look closer at this relationship. This study aimed to assess the association between cyberbullying and professional quality of life among nurses in Southeast Iran.
This research utilized a descriptive cross-sectional design and recruited 335 nurses from Kerman University of Medical Sciences affiliated hospitals during 2025. Subjects were enrolled using a convenience sampling approach, and data were collected using the Menesini Cyberbullying Questionnaire and the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL). Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 24 and descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, analysis of variance, spearman correlation coefficients, and stepwise multivariate regression, with a significance level of less than 0.05.
Data analysis indicated a low prevalence of cyberbullying among nurses. The mean scores of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress were 34.71 ± 5.47, 16.03 ± 3.92, and 31.63 ± 4.90, respectively, all of which fell within the moderate range. Inferential findings indicated a significant positive correlation between cyberbullying and compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Furthermore, cyberbullying emerged as a significant positive predictor across all three dimensions of professional quality of life in regression analyses. Additionally, key demographic and occupational factors including educational degree, shift type, employment status, gender, and marital status emerged as significant predictors within their respective models.
The findings indicated that cyberbullying was generally low and showed significant statistical associations with compassion fatigue in the analyses. Targeted interventions to enhance nurses' professional quality of life should be prioritized in healthcare settings. Furthermore, longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to better elucidate the temporal and causal relationships among these variables.
Nurse administrators should adopt preventive strategies addressing workplace cyberbullying and compassion fatigue to enhance nurses' professional quality of life.
This research utilized a descriptive cross-sectional design and recruited 335 nurses from Kerman University of Medical Sciences affiliated hospitals during 2025. Subjects were enrolled using a convenience sampling approach, and data were collected using the Menesini Cyberbullying Questionnaire and the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL). Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 24 and descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, analysis of variance, spearman correlation coefficients, and stepwise multivariate regression, with a significance level of less than 0.05.
Data analysis indicated a low prevalence of cyberbullying among nurses. The mean scores of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress were 34.71 ± 5.47, 16.03 ± 3.92, and 31.63 ± 4.90, respectively, all of which fell within the moderate range. Inferential findings indicated a significant positive correlation between cyberbullying and compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Furthermore, cyberbullying emerged as a significant positive predictor across all three dimensions of professional quality of life in regression analyses. Additionally, key demographic and occupational factors including educational degree, shift type, employment status, gender, and marital status emerged as significant predictors within their respective models.
The findings indicated that cyberbullying was generally low and showed significant statistical associations with compassion fatigue in the analyses. Targeted interventions to enhance nurses' professional quality of life should be prioritized in healthcare settings. Furthermore, longitudinal and interventional studies are needed to better elucidate the temporal and causal relationships among these variables.
Nurse administrators should adopt preventive strategies addressing workplace cyberbullying and compassion fatigue to enhance nurses' professional quality of life.
Authors
Malekghasemi Malekghasemi, Arabpoor Arabpoor, Mehdizadeh Mehdizadeh, Vaziri Vaziri, Dehghan Dehghan, Shahrbabaki Shahrbabaki
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