Limited Moderating Effect of Podcast Listening on Work Stress and Emotional Exhaustion Among Nurses During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-Sectional Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressure on health care systems worldwide, significantly impacting frontline health care workers, especially nurses. These professionals faced considerable psychological stress from caring for patients with COVID-19 and the fear of spreading the virus to their families. Studies report that more than 60% (132/220) of nurses experience anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion, which adversely affect their mental health and the quality of care they provide. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between work-related stress and emotional exhaustion among nurses and to assess whether listening to podcasts moderates this association. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted between March 1, 2023, and March 31, 2023. A total of 271 clinical nurses, aged 20 years to 65 years, were recruited for the study. Participants were divided into 2 groups: experimental group consisting of regular podcast listeners (n=173) and control group comprising nonlisteners (n=98). Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the local ethics committee (IRB number YGHIRB20230421B). Validated scales were used to measure work stress, emotional dissonance, and emotional exhaustion. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, independent t tests, and structural equation modeling to examine the relationships between variables. RESULTS: No statistically significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups in terms of overall work stress (mean difference=-0.09, 95% CI -0.31 to 0.13; P=.42) or emotional exhaustion (mean difference=0.07, 95% CI -0.15 to 0.29; P=.53). Emotional dissonance emerged as a significant predictor of emotional exhaustion in both the experimental (β=0.476, P<.001) and control (β=0.321, P=.01) groups. Nurses reporting higher workloads had significantly higher emotional exhaustion levels (experimental group: β=0.302, P<.001; control group: β=0.327, P=.002). Podcast listening demonstrated only a slight, nonsignificant moderating effect. CONCLUSIONS: Although podcasts alone may not significantly reduce work stress or emotional exhaustion among nurses, there was a potential, albeit limited, moderating effect of podcasts on emotional well-being. They could serve as a supplementary tool for emotional support. However, broader and more comprehensive interventions are required to address the underlying causes of stress and emotional exhaustion in this population. More in-depth exploration and recommendations are possible by analyzing the content and patterns of listening. Further research is needed to examine the long-term benefits of integrating podcasts with other digital tools for holistic stress management in health care settings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".