The Role of Professional Grief in Moderating Job Stress and Turnover Intention Among Nurses

Background Nurses, as the largest workforce in healthcare, play a crucial role in achieving universal health coverage. However, they continually face both physical and emotional burdens. Identifying key stressors that contribute to turnover intention and examining whether professional grief moderates the relationship between job stress and turnover intention is essential for reducing nurse attrition. Methods This study utilized linear regression models and the Extreme Gradient Boosting machine (XGBoost) learning algorithm to analyze the impact of the total score of job stress and their dimensions on turnover intention. XGBoost, known for enhancing sensitivity in detection and improving generalization performance, is particularly beneficial for high-dimensional problems and data heterogeneity. It integrates multiple variables and accommodates small sample sizes, making it a valuable supplement to conventional regression techniques. Through hierarchical regression, the moderating role of professional grief between job stress and turnover intention was explored. Additionally, an interactive tool was used to visually present the results. Results Among the dimensions of job stress, patient care issues exhibited the strongest association with turnover intention, followed by nursing profession and work problems, time allocation and workload, management and interpersonal issues, and working environment and equipment problems. Notably, professional grief significantly moderated the relationship between job stress and turnover intention. Specifically, for overall job stress and the dimensions of nursing profession and work-related problems, time allocation and workload, and patient care issues, higher levels of professional grief intensified their impact on turnover intention. However, this moderating effect was not observed for stressors related to management and interpersonal issues or working environment and equipment problems. Conclusion In emotionally labor-intensive work environments, professional grief tends to amplify turnover intention, while its impact on issues related to management and material resources is less pronounced.Healthcare policymakers should focus on job stress and professional grief to reduce turnover intention, ultimately benefiting patient care and treatment outcomes.