Psychological contract, psychological capital, career plateau, and job embeddedness among early-career nurses: a serial mediation model

Background: Early-career nurses are critical for sustaining the nursing workforce, yet they are particularly vulnerable to stress, role transition difficulties, and turnover. Job embeddedness offers an important lens for understanding why nurses stay, but the psychological mechanisms linking organizational perceptions to embeddedness remain insufficiently understood in this population. Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional survey was conducted from August to October 2024 in four tertiary hospitals in Henan Province, China. A convenience sample of 337 early-career nurses (≤3 years of clinical experience) completed validated measures of psychological contract, psychological capital, career plateau, and job embeddedness. Serial mediation was tested using the PROCESS macro (Model 6, 5,000 bootstrap samples), controlling for age, marital status, department, number of night shifts per week, and monthly income. Results: < 0.01). After adjusting for covariates, psychological contract significantly predicted higher job embeddedness. The indirect effect through psychological capital alone was 0.095 (95% CI: 0.024-0.179), through career plateau alone was 0.193 (95% CI: 0.139-0.249), and the serial indirect effect through psychological capital and career plateau was negative (-0.052, 95% CI: -0.180 to -0.020), indicating a suppression pattern. The total indirect effect was 0.236, and the direct effect remained significant (0.337). Conclusions: Psychological contract enhances job embeddedness among early-career nurses both directly and through the serial mediating roles of psychological capital and career plateau. Higher psychological capital may, under limited career development resources, heighten perceptions of career plateau and partly suppress the positive impact of psychological contract. Strengthening psychological contract fulfillment while simultaneously providing realistic career development pathways may help retain early-career nurses in tertiary hospitals.