Professional Quality of Life and Advance Care Planning Self-efficacy of Medical and Surgical Nurses

Introduction: Nurses continuously navigate the ever-changing and evolving field of healthcare. As nurses adapt to the emerging landscape of healthcare, their quality of professional life and self-effectiveness in early care planning become crucial factors to consider. Establishing how the professional quality of life dimensions correlate with advance care planning self-efficacy among medical and surgical nurses could therefore generate valuable insights. Objectives: The study examines the relationship between Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) and Advance Care Planning Self-efficacy (ACP-SEc) among medical-surgical nurses in Shandong Province, China. Methods: The research was a descriptive correlational study aimed at identifying trends between variables related to nurses’ professional quality of life and advance care planning self-efficacy. It explores how nurses’ self-efficacy in care planning impacts their professional quality of life, considering factors like compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Purposive sampling was used to select participants and employed questionnaires for demographic data, ProQOL, & ACP-Sec for data collection. Results: Findings suggest that higher self-efficacy in advance care planning correlates with a positive professional quality of life, but not significantly with burnout or secondary stress trauma. This suggests that while self-efficacy in advance care planning may contribute to a better professional quality of life, it may not directly influence the experience of burnout or secondary stress trauma in nurses. Conclusion: The study underscores the importance of enhancing nurses’ self-efficacy in advance care planning to improve patient care and nurses’ job satisfaction. Further research is needed to explore these relationships in more depth.