2.1. Study participants

The participants of this descriptive study consisted of nurses who worked at the medical and surgical wards, intensive care units, and emergency departments of three general hospitals for at least 1 year. The participants voluntarily agreed to complete the questionnaire and provide a 3-month work schedule starting in June 2018. Owing to the lack of previous studies, the effect size was assumed to be Cohen's [16] median effect size (d = 0.5) for average comparison between the two groups using nonparametric methodology. The minimum number of participants was estimated to be 185 nurses, considering a dropout rate of 20%.

Participants were recruited by posting advertisement on bulletin boards of three web-communities (“Nurscape,” “Nurse story,” or “Everything about nurses”) where nurses communicate, and of two nursing schools in a metropolitan city (Busan) and a province (Gyeongnam). Among 185 questionnaires distributed, 182 (response rate: 98.4%) were used for the analysis after excluding three incomplete questionnaires; 152 from web-communities and 30 from nursing schools.