Perceived Work Dirtiness and Procrastination Among Frontline Healthcare Workers: The Moderating Role of Patient Relationship Attachment.

In the healthcare sector, frontline healthcare workers often have to deal with tasks that are labelled as 'dirty work.' These tasks not only pose potential threats to their physical health but may also significantly impact their psychological state and work outcomes. Despite the critical nature of these issues, there is currently a relative scarcity of research in this area. Therefore, based on the cognitive appraisal theory of stress, we conducted a two-stage time-lagged questionnaire survey among frontline healthcare workers in three large hospitals in China. The analysis of 526 valid questionnaires revealed that the perception of dirty work among frontline medical staff has a positive impact on work procrastination, with avoidance motivation, approach motivation, and sense of work meaning playing a serial mediating role in this process, and patient attachment moderating this mediating effect. These findings not only provide a new perspective for understanding the psychological mechanisms behind the work procrastination behaviour of frontline healthcare workers but also lay the foundation for healthcare institutions, especially for those medical staff who are frequently in dirty work environments, to develop scientific, evidence-based intervention strategies.