References
Building resilience in contemporary nursing practice
Abstract
The nursing profession is being threatened by staff shortages. Catherine Best explains why building resilience from within the profession is vital to safeguarding its future, by keeping newly qualified nurses in the job and preventing emotional ‘burnout’ across disciplines
Resilience in nursing has been critiqued and challenged throughout the nursing literature. Trends in nursing have led to many nurses leaving the profession early in their career, often due to the immense pressures that they work under. There are many opinions on how nurses can develop the resilience needed to maintain professional integrity and continue to provide safe and effective care, while attempting to shoulder the considerable impact of political and professional drivers. This not only leaves nurses exhausted but often without hope. By taking collective action, this article argues that nurses may benefit from sharing ideas and learning from others, and in so doing rekindle hope and a belief that things can change.
Resilience is a concept where people are encouraged to re-frame negative experiences or stressors so that they become a fundamental occasion for personal growth (Gill and Orgad, 2018). Central to this is the development of resilience and empowerment, both being attributes that can enable the individual to cope in stressful situations (Pines et al, 2017).
Resilience has been extensively explored in the nursing literature and is considered an essential characteristic of nurses (Scammell, 2017; Kester and Wei, 2018). Physicians who report a greater level of career satisfaction are more likely to be associated with a greater level of patient satisfaction (DeVoe et al, 2007), while nurses who report increased levels of resilience are more inclined to report higher levels of patient care (Williams et al, 2016). Disappointingly, reports have told of catastrophic failings in healthcare, in which nurses have been implicated (Francis, 2013; Kirkup, 2015). The profession has come under scrutiny as the goal to fix nursing gains impetus (Strickland, 2018). This is no more evident than with the new pre-registration nursing standards (Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), 2018a) and the continued challenge to degree nursing status (Strickland, 2018). Despite these perceived failings and poor practices, many nurses have adopted a stoic approach and continue to tolerate working under immense pressure, often in conflicting and stressful environments. This situation, if allowed to continue, ultimately leads to burn out (Haik et al, 2017) and ‘compassion fatigue’ – which occurs as a result of the nurses' decreasing capacity to express empathy due to continual exposure to the suffering of others (Peters, 2018).
Register now to continue reading
Thank you for visiting Practice Nursing and reading some of our peer-reviewed resources for general practice nurses. To read more, please register today. You’ll enjoy the following great benefits:
What's included
-
Limited access to clinical or professional articles
-
New content and clinical newsletter updates each month