A Re-examination of the Individual Differences Approach That Explains Occupational Resilience and Psychological Adjustment Among Nurses

Aims: This study re-examines the validity of a model of occupational resilience for use by nursing managers, which focused on an individual differences approach that explained buffering factors against negative outcomes such as burnout for nurses.

Background: The International Collaboration of Workforce Resilience model (Rees et al., 2015, Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 73) provided initial evidence of its value as a parsimonious model of resilience, and resilience antecedents and outcomes (e.g., burnout). Whether this model's adequacy was largely sample dependent, or a valid explanation of occupational resilience, has been subsequently un-examined in the literature to date. To address this question, we re-examined the model with a larger and an entirely new sample of student nurses.

Methods: A sample of nursing students (n = 708, Age = 26.4 (7.7) years), with data examined via a rigorous latent factor structural equation model.

Results: The model upheld many of its relationship predictions following further testing.

Conclusions: The model was able to explain the individual differences, antecedents, and burnout-related outcomes, of resilience within a nursing context.

Implications For Nursing Management: The results highlight the importance of skills training to develop mindfulness and self-efficacy among nurses as a means of fostering resilience and positive psychological adjustment.