Moderating Effect of Burnout on the Relationship between Self-Efficacy and Job Performance among Psychiatric Nurses for COVID-19 in National Hospitals.

Background and Objective: The unprecedented spread of infectious diseases, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, in psychiatric units has affected the self-efficacy, burnout, and job performances of psychiatric nurses. We conducted a survey to investigate the moderating effect of burnout on the relationship between the self-efficacy and job performances of psychiatric nurses. Materials and Methods: Validated and structured questionnaires were used to collect data from 186 nurses in psychiatric units for COVID-19. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson's correlation coefficient, and a series of multiple linear regression analyses based on Baron and Kenny's method using the SPSS 26.0 program. Results: Job performance was positively correlated with self-efficacy (r = 0.75, p < 0.001) but had no significant correlation with burnout (r = -0.11, p = 0.150). Self-efficacy was negatively correlated with burnout (r = -0.22, p = 0.002). Burnout among psychiatric nurses had significant moderating effects on self-efficacy and job performance (ß = -0.11, p = 0.024). Conclusions: These findings indicate a need to prevent burnout and to enhance self-efficacy in psychiatric nurses to increase their job performances and serve as a basis for establishing strategies to deploy medical staff in the future.

Effects of a Short Emotional Management Program on Inpatients with Schizophrenia: A Pilot Study.

The prevalence of schizophrenia is gradually increasing worldwide. Many patients with schizophrenia have a diminished ability to empathize and to detect their own emotions or those of others, deteriorating their social functioning and their quality of life. Nonetheless, emotional management training may improve patients' emotion recognition, emotional expression, and negative symptoms. Developing and applying a short but effective program that reflects the current medical environment, in which hospital stays are ever-diminishing, is warranted. This one-group, pretest-posttest, quasi-experimental pilot study aimed to examine the effects of a short emotional management program (EMP-S) on 17 patients with chronic schizophrenia. Participants were patients hospitalized in the National Center for Mental Health in Korea. After the completion of a twice-a-week, eight-session, four-week long EMP-S, participants showed improvements in emotion recognition, emotional expression, and negative symptoms. Our results suggest the applicability and potential effectiveness of the EMP-S, which takes the length of psychiatric hospital stay and the inpatient environment into consideration. To minimize any barriers to social functioning in the post-discharge lives of inpatients with chronic schizophrenia and enhance their social cognition-by improving their emotion recognition, emotional expression, and negative symptoms-we suggest the periodical administration of this EMP-S to these inpatients.