Occupational grief and self-compassion among intensive care unit nurses in tertiary hospitals: a cross-sectional study

Background Intensive care unit (ICU) nurses frequently encounter patient suffering and death and may develop occupational grief. Evidence on occupational grief and its association with self-compassion among ICU nurses in China remains limited. Objective To describe occupational grief among ICU nurses in tertiary hospitals and examine its relationship with self-compassion. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 355 ICU nurses from nine tertiary hospitals in Shandong, China, were recruited by cluster sampling between January and February 2024. Participants completed a general information questionnaire, the Grief State Scale for Nurses, and the Self-Compassion Scale-Short Form. Descriptive statistics, Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses, reliability testing, confirmatory factor analysis, dimension-level non-parametric comparisons, and hierarchical linear regression were performed. Results The mean occupational grief score was 35.22 ± 11.19, and the item mean score was 2.07 ± 0.66. The mean self-compassion score was 37.30 ± 4.03, and the item mean score was 3.11 ± 0.34. Occupational grief was negatively correlated with self-compassion ( Pearson r = −0.323, p < 0.01; Spearman ρ = −0.305, p < 0.001). In hierarchical regression additionally including education level as a theoretically relevant covariate, poorer self-rated health, self-rated type C personality, self-rated type D personality, and lower self-compassion were independently associated with higher occupational grief. For working-hour categories, working fewer than 8 h per duty day was associated with lower occupational grief compared with working 8–10 h, whereas the >10-h category was not statistically significant in the adjusted model. Self-compassion explained an additional 4.1% of the variance, and the full model explained 20.2% (adjusted R 2 = 0.179). Conclusion Occupational grief among ICU nurses was relatively mild based on item mean scores, and Self-compassion was independently associated with occupational grief. Measurement and personality-type findings should be interpreted cautiously, and causal effects require confirmation in longitudinal and intervention studies.