Associations of maternal fatigue and perceived nurse-parent support with cyberchondria dimensions among mothers of hospitalized children aged 0-6 years: a path analysis.

Authors

Zeliha Yılmaz, Ayşe Cetintas, Selin Tan, Ozge Karakaya Suzan

Published in

BMC public health. Volume 26. Issue 1. Sep 02, 2026. Epub Sep 02, 2026.

Abstract

Cyberchondria has become increasingly prominent among mothers experiencing heightened uncertainty, stress, and caregiving burden during pediatric hospitalization, highlighting the critical role of professional nurse-parent support and holistic nursing care in managing this process.
To examine associations of maternal fatigue and perceived nurse-parent support with five dimensions of cyberchondria-compulsion, distress, excessiveness, reassurance, and mistrust of medical professionals among mothers of hospitalized children aged 0-6 years using structural equation modeling.
This cross-sectional study was conducted between April and November 2025 in the pediatric wards of a Training and Research Hospital in western Türkiye. The sample consisted of 216 mothers of hospitalized children aged 0-6 years. Data were collected using the Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI), the Nurse Parent Support Tool (NPST), and the Cyberchondria Severity Scale (CSS). Relationships among variables were analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Standardized path coefficients (β), explained variance (R²), and bootstrapping (5,000 resamples) were used to evaluate the structural model.
Mothers demonstrated moderate levels of cyberchondria (73.16 ± 23.31) and fatigue (2.86 ± 1.07). Nurse-parent support was significantly and negatively associated with all cyberchondria subdimensions (β ranging from - 0.335 to - 0.436, p < 0.001). Fatigue severity showed limited and subdimension-specific effects, whereas fatigue interference with daily activities was not a significant predictor. The model explained 11%-21% of the variance in cyberchondria subdimensions. Multi-group analyses indicated that the negative association between nurse-parent support and cyberchondria dimensions remained consistent across demographic subgroups.
Perceived nurse-parent support was consistently associated with lower levels of cyberchondria. These findings highlight the importance of structured nurse-parent communication and support when addressing cyberchondria-related online health information-seeking behaviors among mothers of hospitalized children.

PMID:
42823684
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 02 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.