Alleviating Doctors’ Emotional Exhaustion through Sports Involvement during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediating Roles of Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy and Perceived Stress

Huilin Wang, Xiao Zheng, Yang Liu, Ziqing Xu () and Jingyu Yang ()
Additional contact information
Huilin Wang: School of Bussiness, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China
Xiao Zheng: School of Bussiness, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China
Yang Liu: School of Bussiness, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan 411201, China
Ziqing Xu: International College, National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok 10240, Thailand
Jingyu Yang: Department of Medical Bioinformatics, University of Göttingen, 37077 Gottingen, Germany

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 18, 1-13

Abstract: This study aims to understand the state of emotional exhaustion of Chinese doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic, and explore the role of sports involvement in enhancing doctors’ regulatory emotional self-efficacy, reducing stress perception, and alleviating emotional exhaustion. Finally, report the existing problems and make recommendations to the government and hospitals. The researchers constructed a cross-sectional questionnaire survey to collect data. From March to April 2022, using the snowball and convenience sampling methods, a total of 413 valid questionnaires were collected from 13 hospitals in Hunan Province. AMOS 23.0 was used to construct a structural equation model (SEM) with the bootstrapping approach to verify the proposed hypotheses. Doctors with more sports involvement exhibited higher levels of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and lesser perceived stress. Doctors who exhibited higher regulatory emotional self-efficacy had lesser perceived stress. The relationship between sports involvement and emotional exhaustion was mediated by perceived stress and/or regulatory emotional self-efficacy. Therefore, the government and hospitals should strengthen the depth and intensity of implementing the “National Fitness Program” at the hospital level, instead of just holding short-term activities with a small number of participants, but to cover all medical staff with fitness opportunities.

Keywords: doctors; sports involvement; emotional exhaustion; self-efficacy; perceived stress; National Fitness Program (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11776/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11776/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:18:p:11776-:d:918145

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().