Dongmei Zou,1,* Yanqiong Liu,2,* Youwen Gong,3 Xueqing Zhang,4 Jieqiong Liu,4 Jinhua Shen4 

1Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Changde Hospital, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University (The First People’s Hospital of Changde city), Changde, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Cardiology, Changde Hospital, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University (The First People’s Hospital of Changde City), Changde, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Neurosurgery, Changde Hospital, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University (The First People’s Hospital of Changde City), Changde, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Nursing, Changde Hospital, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University (The first People’s hospital of Changde city), Changde, People’s Republic of China

*These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence: Youwen Gong, Department of Neurosurgery, Changde Hospital, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University (The first People’s hospital of Changde city), Changde, People’s Republic of China, Email 1755144149@qq.com Xueqing Zhang, Department of Nursing, Changde Hospital, Xiangya School of Medicine, Central South University (The first People’s hospital of Changde city), Changde, People’s Republic of China, Email 382731326@qq.com

Purpose: This study investigated the current state of self-efficacy and the association between self-perceived burden (SPB) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among Chinese older-adult inpatients.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using convenience sampling to survey Chinese older-adult inpatients. Data regarding demographic characteristics, self-efficacy, SPB, and HRQoL were collected. Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to examine the correlations among the research variables. SPSS® Statistics V26.0, and SPSS® PROCESS Macro Model 4 were used to analyze the available data. The bootstrap method was used to analyze the mediating role of self-efficacy.
Results: Survey participants included 514 older-adult inpatients, with a mean age of 72.28± 5.58 years. Self-efficacy (r=0.471, p< 0.01) was positively correlated with HRQoL, whereas self-efficacy (r=− 0.891, p< 0.01) and HRQoL (r=− 0.516, p< 0.01) were negatively correlated with SPB. The mediating effect analysis revealed that self-efficacy either completely or partially mediated the effect of SPB on HRQoL, with the indirect effect accounting for 30.2% of the total.
Conclusion: This study provides a mediating model suggesting that SPB exerts both direct and indirect effects on the HRQoL of older-adult inpatients through self-efficacy.

Keywords: aging, Chinese, negative emotions, self-efficacy, health-related quality of life, mediating effects