Decision Fatigue among Nurses in a Third‐Level Grade A Hospital in China: A Cross‐Sectional Study on Prevalence and Predictors

This study aimed to investigate the current status and identify predictors of decision fatigue among nurses in a third-level grade A hospital in China. The nursing profession requires frequent high-stakes decision-making, which may progressively deplete cognitive resources and result in decision fatigue. Such fatigue compromises both patient care quality and nurses' psychological well-being, necessitating systematic investigation. A cross-sectional, electronic research surveyed a convenience sample of 925 hospital nurses at a 6,772-bed tertiary hospital in Central China from May 30 to June 23, 2023, using validated instruments: the Chinese version of 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10) for resilience, the Nurses' Perceived Organizational Support (NPOS) for organizational support, and the Decision Fatigue Scale (DFS) for decision fatigue measurement. A STROBE checklist was used to report the results. Among 983 distributed questionnaires, 925 valid responses were collected (94.10% response rate). The mean score of decision fatigue among nurses was 10.19 ± 5.91. Additionally, regression analysis revealed sleep quality of last week, resilience (CD-RISC-10), and instrumental support (NPOS) collectively explained 22.4% of the variance in decision fatigue. This study demonstrates a moderate level of decision fatigue compared to other prior studies. The results unveiled that nurses with better sleep quality, higher resilience scores, and stronger perceived instrumental support exhibited lower susceptibility to decision fatigue. Hospital administrators and policymakers should implement targeted interventions to improve nurses' sleep quality, strengthen resilience through training programs, and optimize organizational support systems to mitigate decision fatigue in clinical practice.