Surviving an infectious disease outbreak: How does nurse calling influence performance during the COVID-19 fight?

Aim: To assess the performance of front-line nurses, who believed they were living out their calling, during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Background: Although as a profession nursing generally requires high levels of performance, the disruption arising from an infectious disease outbreak increases the work stress and decreases the performance of front-line nurses. How this situation can be improved has yet to be thoroughly examined.

Method: We used a snowball sampling technique to recruit 339 nurses who were originally from outside Hubei but volunteered to join medical teams going to Hubei to tackle COVID-19.

Results: Drawing on the theory of work as a calling, we found that living a calling had a positive effect on front-line nurses' performance through the clinical and relational care they provided. Perceived supervisor support strengthened these mediated relationships.

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that despite the constraints associated with pandemics, front-line nurses who are living a calling are able to provide better clinical and relational care to infected patients, which in turn improves their performance.

Implications For Nursing Management: The findings of this study suggest that hospitals can introduce career educational interventions to enhance nurses' ability to discern and live out their calling to improve their performance.