Abstract: Objective To investigate the mediating effect of regulatory emotion self-efficacy in the relationship between ICU nurses' narrative competence and rumination. Methods The convenience sampling was used to select 472 ICU nurses from 34 tertiary grade-A hospitals and 7 secondary grade-A second-class hospitals in Guangdong Province from June to September 2022, and they were investigated by using general information questionnaire, Chinese-Event Related Rumination Inventory Scale, Narrative Competence Scale and Regulatory Emotional Regulatory Self-efficacy Questionnaire. SPSS 25.0 was used to test the mediating effect. Results The total score of narrative competence, rumination and regulatory emotion self-efficacy was 143.00(130.25, 155.00), 25.00(20.00, 36.00), and 45.00(39.00, 48.00) respectively. Narrative competence was negatively correlated with intrusive rumination (r_s=-0.121, P<0.01), but positively with regulatory emotional regulatory self-efficacy (r_s=0.490, P<0.001). Narrative competence could positively predict regulatory emotional self-efficacy (β=0.186, P<0.001). Regulatory eEmotional regulatory self-efficacy could negatively predict rumination (β=-0.423, P<0.001), which also played a suppressed role between narrative competence and rumination, and the indirect effect value was -0.079, accounting for 85.9% of the direct effect. Conclusion Narrative competence can directly predict rumination. Regulatory Emotional regulatory self-efficacy has an suppression effect between narrative competence and rumination. It is important to enhance the development of narrative competence among ICU nurses, thus to improve their self-efficacy in emotion regulation. This, in turn, may help reduce negative rumination caused by stressful events.

Key words: ICU nurse, narrative competence, rumination, regulatory emotional regulatory self-efficacy, suppression effect