Resilience : a personal attribute, social process and key professional resource for the enhancement of the nursing role

Resilience is the positive adjustment to adversity. Nursing work is characterised by assisting patients and families to cope through varying types of adversity- accidents, illness, disasters and upheaval and also in encouraging and supporting people to adapt, recover and maintain wellbeing. Thus strategies to promote resilience need to be integral to nurses’ daily practice. Adverse conditions are also commonly experienced by nurses themselves and this impacts negatively on attitude to work, stress and burnout and this affects the whole profession through ongoing shortages, and disengagement with the work still to be done by nursing in terms of research and practice development.This paper will discuss the meaning of resilience, how it has been researched and applied to health care and to nursing. It will suggest pro-active strategies that educators, researchers and clinical nurses can implement that work on building strength, focus and endurance in individuals, communities and the workplaces.