Moderating effect of occupational stress on spirituality and depression of Registered Nurses in tertiary hospital: A structural equation model.

AIM: The aim of this study was to determine the influence of spirituality to depression and to determine the moderating effect of occupational stress among Registered Nurses. BACKGROUND: Depression is a major contributor to the global burden of disease and it is influenced by several factors. Spirituality can be a protective factor against depression. However, it remains underexplored among nurses who experience several precipitating factors of depression, including occupational stress. DESIGN: Cross-sectional, predictive-correlational study. METHODS: From August - December 2017, 242 purposively selected nurses from selected tertiary hospitals completed a four-part survey packet composed of the "robotfoto," Spirituality Assessment Scale, Expanded Nursing Stress Scale, and Beck's Depression Inventory-II. Structural equation modelling analysed the influence of spirituality to depression, while multigroup analysis determined the moderating effect of occupational stress. RESULTS: "Personal faith, spiritual contentment, and religious practice" negatively influenced depression, generating a good model. Occupational stress significantly moderated the influence of spirituality to depression, with a significant inverse U-shaped effect for both "personal faith" and "religious practice" and a non-significant decreasing effect for "spiritual contentment". CONCLUSION: The stress-moderated model of the influence of spirituality to depression highlights three significant points. First, there is a need to develop individualized, spiritually based interventions based on the spiritual needs of Registered Nurses. Second, policies geared towards positive spirituality in the workplace and spiritual support to nurses must be explored. Finally, nurse managers must identify the sources of occupational stress and implement stress-reducing programmes in the workplace.

Novel role for vinculin in ventricular myocyte mechanics and dysfunction.

Vinculin (Vcl) plays a key structural role in ventricular myocytes that, when disrupted, can lead to contractile dysfunction and dilated cardiomyopathy. To investigate the role of Vcl in myocyte and myocardial function, cardiomyocyte-specific Vcl knockout mice (cVclKO) and littermate control wild-type mice were studied with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tagging before the onset of global ventricular dysfunction. MRI revealed significantly decreased systolic strains transverse to the myofiber axis in vivo, but no changes along the muscle fibers or in fiber tension in papillary muscles from heterozygous global Vcl null mice. Myofilament lattice spacing from TEM was significantly greater in cVclKO versus wild-type hearts fixed in the unloaded state. AFM in Vcl heterozygous null mouse myocytes showed a significant decrease in membrane cortical stiffness. A multiscale computational model of ventricular mechanics incorporating cross-bridge geometry and lattice mechanics showed that increased transverse systolic stiffness due to increased lattice spacing may explain the systolic wall strains associated with Vcl deficiency, before the onset of ventricular dysfunction. Loss of cardiac myocyte Vcl may decrease systolic transverse strains in vivo by decreasing membrane cortical tension, which decreases transverse compression of the lattice thereby increasing interfilament spacing and stress transverse to the myofibers.