Abstract:

Objective To study the mediating role of empowering leadership in the relationship between technology overload and job burnout of emergency department nurses，so as to provide a basis for improving the empowering leadership of emergency department nurses，reducing technology overload and alleviating job burnout. Methods From October 2024 to January 2025，182 emergency department nurses from 8 grade-A tertiary general hospitals in Jiangsu Province were selected as the survey subjects by simple random sampling. The technology overload scale，empowering leadership scale and job burnout scale were used to investigate and analyze the correlation between the three. The differences in technology overload，empowering leadership and job burnout scores among different factors were compared. Logistic regression was used to analyze the risk factors of technology overload，empowering leadership and job burnout of emergency department nurses. A structural equation model was established using AMOS 24.0 software to analyze the mediating role of empowering leadership in technology overload and job burnout. Results The scores of technical overload，empowering leadership and job burnout of emergency department nurses were （30.48±6.74），（35.76±7.12） and （61.16±10.64）points，respectively. There were statistically significant differences in the scores of technical overload，empowering leadership and job burnout among emergency department nurses with different age，nursing working hours，professional and technical level，marital status and average monthly income among emergency department nurses（all P<0.05）. Age ≥40 years，nursing working hours ≥10 years，junior professional and technical level，married（divorced） marital status and average monthly income <15 000 yuan were independent risk factors for technical overload，empowering leadership and job burnout of emergency department nurses（all P<0.05）. The technical overload of emergency department nurses was positively correlated with the job burnout score（r=0.574，P<0.01），and negatively correlated with empowering leadership（r=-0.486，P<0.01）. The empowering leadership was negatively correlated with the job burnout score（r=-0.469，P<0.01）. The empowering leadership played a partial mediating role between technical overload and job burnout，with a mediating effect value of 0.270，accounting for 35.90% of the total effect. Conclusion The empowering leadership played a partial mediating role between the technical overload and job burnout of emergency department nurses. Improving the empowering leadership level of emergency department nurses and reducing the technical overload level are conducive to reducing the level of job burnout.

Key words: Emergency department nurses, Empowering leadership, Technology overload, Job burnout, Mediating effect