BACKGROUND: Professional self-efficacy is a key factor in nurses' career development and is associated with individual mindset and self-perception. However, research on the potential influence mechanism of professional self-efficacy in clinical nursing interns from the perspective of individual mindset and self-perception in China, or internationally, is limited. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to explore the relationship between core self-evaluation, growth mindset, and professional self-efficacy among nursing interns, and the mediating effect of growth mindset on the relationship between core self-evaluation and professional self-efficacy. DESIGN: A cross-sectional survey design was used. SETTINGS AND PARTICIPANTS: Considering the ready accessibility for collecting samples and meeting with the purpose of this study, this study was conducted using a convenience sample of 266 clinical nursing interns from three general hospitals in Hangzhou, China, from March to July 2023. METHODS: Convenience sampling was used to recruit 266 nursing students [236 female, 30 male] from three comprehensive tertiary hospitals in the provincial capital city of Zhejiang, China. The data were collected using the Core Self-Evaluation Scale, Growth Mindset Scale, and Professional Self-Efficacy Questionnaire from March to July 2023. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics (version 26.0
IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). Descriptive analyses of the demographic characteristics, correlation analyses and multivariate linear regressions of the three variables were performed. The PROCESS macro for SPSS (Model 4) was used to examine the relationship between core self-evaluation, professional self-efficacy, and the mediating effect of growth mindset. RESULTS: The average professional self-efficacy score was (87.95 ± 17.84). Core self-evaluation and a growth mindset were found to have a statistically significant relationship to professional self-efficacy. Growth mindset mediated the relationship between core self-evaluation and professional self-efficacy (β = 0.491, P <
0.001). The results of the nonparametric bootstrapping method confirmed the significance of the indirect effect of core self-evaluation through growth mindset (95 % bootstrap CI = 0.093, 0.241). The indirect effect of growth mindset accounted for 32.6 % of the total variance in professional self-efficacy. CONCLUSION: The professional self-efficacy of Chinese nursing interns was at a low to medium level and demand extensive attention. On the one hand, clinical nursing managers and teachers should focus on cultivating the core self-evaluation of nursing interns to improve their professional self-efficacy. On the other hand, growth mindset offers a mediating variable between the core self-evaluation and professional self-efficacy of nursing interns. Therefore, it is recommended that growth mindset be developed by incorporating growth mindset training into the curriculum and using school and clinical co-education to enhance students' professional self-efficacy.