The resilience standpoint in nursing

Nurses are often portrayed as surmounting enormous challenges with courage and grace (Stanley, 2008). This is a flattering image for nurses, but it has become so commonplace that people have wrongly conflated the actions of heroic nurses who have achieved extraordinary things with the inherent traits that all nurses share. But not all nurses are born strong or endowed with the traits of resiliency. This chapter draws on the resilience standpoint to critique such descriptions and suggest a more sustainable way to imagine nurses and nursing.