Influencing Factors and Mediating Mechanisms of Job Crafting in Clinical Nursing Practice

Background Job crafting plays a pivotal role in nursing management, with its optimization having the potential to enhance the quality of clinical care, the efficacy of healthcare organizations, and the multifaceted professional development of nurses. Design: A multi-center cross-sectional survey design was employed. Methods This study utilized a sample of 1,273 clinical nurses from tertiary hospitals in Inner Mongolia, China, selected through multistage sampling. To analyze the influencing factors and pathways, multiple linear regression and the Hayes PROCESS macro program (Models 4 and 6) were employed. Results The findings indicated that clinical nurses exhibited a moderately high level of job crafting, which was significantly influenced by career calling, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and regulatory focus; extraversion and conscientiousness operated through the chain mediation of career calling and regulatory focus; whereas agreeableness was mediated through a singular mediation pathway of regulatory focus. This finding elucidates the mechanism by which personality traits differentially influence occupational behavior. Conclusions The study identifies multiple factors affecting nurses' job crafting. It is imperative for nursing managers to comprehensively consider these factors and develop a targeted monitoring system to effectively enhance nurses' capacity for job crafting. Clinical trial number: not applicable.