Background: Mood and emotions are important aspects of social interactions. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the participation of these emotional states in the implementation of tasks resulting from specific professions. The aim of the study is to identify the factors that determine the mood and emotions of nurses working in pediatric wards.
Methods: The pilot studies presented in the paper were carried out using the diagnostic survey method. The collected data were obtained from the authors' own questionnaire and the standardized measurement tool "Scale for Measuring Mood and Six Emotions" by Bogdan Wojciszke and Wiesław Baryła. The study included 121 nurses working in hospital pediatric wards. The survey questionnaire results were obtained online using Google Forms.
Results: Self-assessment of the health condition of nurses is statistically significantly correlated with all emotions and mood (p < 0.05). The better the self-assessment of health, the greater the positive mood measured by the General Mood Scale (GMS) and Mood Scales (MS). The financial situation showed a statistically significant correlation with guilt (p = 0.048), sadness (p = 0.041), and negative mood (p = 0.035). Single people, regardless of gender, were characterized by a greater experience of love (H = 13.497; p < 0.001). The higher the education, the greater the experience of love (p = 0.009). For people with specialization, the presence of negative emotions such as anger (p = 0.039) and guilt (p = 0.049) turned out to be statistically significant. The better the health of children staying in the ward, the higher the negative mood of nurses (p = 0.035).
Conclusions: There was a statistically significant relationship between certain demographic factors, self-assessment of health conditions with the specificity of working in pediatric wards, and the experience of mood and different emotions by nurses working with pediatric inpatients.
Keywords: cross-sectional study; determinants; emotions; mood; nurses in pediatric wards.