Relationship between personality characteristics and stress-load among obstetrics and gynaecologic nurses and midwives: the mediating effect of coping style

Stress is one of the factors that damage the mental health of nurses, part of which can likely be offset by individual personality characteristics and coping styles, and the degree of stress is related to some differences in marriage, night shift, department and so on. The purpose of this study is to investigate the situation and influencing factors of stress-load among nurses and midwives in obstetrics and gynaecology. From February 2023 to March 2023, a cross-sectional study was carried out involving 540 obstetric and gynaecological nurses and midwives from 21 hospitals in Guangdong Province, using the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory (CBF-PI-B), Trait Coping Style Questionnaire (TCSQ), and Chinese version of Stress Load Scale (SOS). A bootstrap method was used to analyse the mediating effect of positive coping and negative coping between personality traits and stress load. The survey achieved a response rate of 92.31% and a total effective rate of 78.89%. The stress load of obstetric and gynaecologic nurses and midwives was moderate, with a total score of 65.30 ± 17.27 points. The most common personality characteristics of the nurses and midwives was conscientiousness. There were significant positive correlations between neuroticism, negative coping, event load, and individual vulnerability (p < 0.01). Conscientiousness, openness, and positive coping were significantly negatively correlated with negative coping and individual vulnerability (p < 0.01). 45.4% of the difference can be explained by positive coping (R2 = 0.454, F = 352.873, p < 0.001), indicating a prominent contribution. Positive coping partially played a mediating role in the relationship between agreeableness (ab=-0.076, 95% CI: -0.145 to -0.020) and event load, while it fully mediated in the relationship between conscientiousness (ab = 0.219, 95% CI: -0.328 to -0.120) and openness (ab = 0.176, 95% CI: -0.277 to -0.091) and individual vulnerability. Negative coping partially played a mediating role in the association between neuroticism and event load (ab = 0.206, 95% CI: 0.151 to 0.269) and individual vulnerability (ab = 0.287, 95% CI: 0.215 to 0.355), while fully played a mediating role in the association between conscientiousness (ab=-0.176, 95% CI: -0.310 to -0.056) and openness (ab=-0.161, 95% CI: -0.261 to -0.063) and individual vulnerability, agreeableness (ab = 0.132, 95% CI: 0.023 to 0.251) and event load. At present, the stress load of obstetrics and gynaecological nurses and midwives is moderately high. Both positive coping and negative coping plays a mediating effect between neuroticism, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness and stress load of nurses.