The association between grit, social support, basic psychological needs satisfaction and psychological well-being among undergraduate nursing students: a cross-sectional study

The psychological well-being (PWB) among undergraduate nursing students represents an important focus within nursing education, with long-term implications for their academic persistence and future professional functioning. Grit has been widely acknowledged to be closely associated with PWB, but the pathways underlying this association remain insufficiently understood. This study analyzed cross-sectional data from 626 Chinese undergraduate nursing students (Mage ± SDage: 20.01 ± 1.29 years) to examine the association between grit and PWB, and how this association related to social support and basic psychological needs satisfaction (BPNS).

Using a serial mediation model, the results showed a robust relationship of grit and PWB (estimate = 0.70, 95% CI = [0.62, 0.79]), even after controlling for age, gender, and socioeconomic status. Results further revealed that social support and BPNS statistically accounted for part of this relationship independently (social support: estimate = 0.22, 95% CI = [0.17, 0.28]; BPNS: estimate = 0.13, 95% CI = [0.08, 0.19]), and their serial indirect pathway was also significant (estimate = 0.06, 95% CI = [0.04, 0.09]). These results indicated that grit was positively associated with PWB among undergraduate nursing students, with statistical indirect pathways involving social support and BPNS identified both independently and sequentially in the serial mediation model.

These findings may provide insights for supporting well-being among undergraduate nursing students and healthcare workforce development, although the cross-sectional design precludes causal inferences. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the students who participated in this study. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32500940), Scientific Research Project of the Education Department of Anhui Province (2025AHGXZK30021), and Teaching Reform Project of the Teaching Steering Committee for Psychology, Ministry of Education.

These authors contributed equally: Ning Li and Junxian Wang. School of Mental Health and Psychological Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, China Ning Li, Junxian Wang, Cuihong Li, Mingzhu Li, Nan Li & Fangxing Song Correspondence to Nan Li or Fangxing Song. The authors declare no competing interests.

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Anhui Medical University (No. 81250602/Date 2024.10). Written informed consent for participation and publication of anonymized data was obtained from all participants before data collection.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material.