Using resilience as a tool for systematic change

“Wicked” problems occur not just for patients in healthcare services, as can be seen in Chapter 1, Resilience in Nursing, but also for nurses in attempting to change and improve their own professional culture. Nursing’s advancement and professionalization has been hampered by internal and external tensions, including professional disunity, public misunderstanding and devaluation, and lack of political will and support to improve conditions (Thorne, 2015). This situation leads to further problems, such as stress, conflict, and burnout, and defensive coping mechanisms that can metamorphose into uncaring behaviors toward patients. It is these "wicked" problems of stress, burnout, and conflict that we focus on in this chapter