Resilience Building: A Necessary Leadership Competence

Cultivating joy: Improving nurse resilience through use of a practice playbook

PURPOSE/AIMS

The purpose of this study was to determine whether resiliency activities, compiled into a practice playbook designed for implementation by nurse leaders and self-initiation by clinical nurses, improves resilience in both the nurse leaders and direct care nurses who implement them.

BACKGROUND

Evidence indicates strengthening nurse resilience increases well-being, protects against burnout, improves retention and increases patient safety.

METHODS

A resilience playbook was assembled to include stress-reduction activities. Resilience was measured at baseline and after two phases during which participants engaged in leader-led and self-initiated activities. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) was used to measure resilience.

RESULTS

A total of 118 nurses completed both phases; 17 leaders and 101 clinical nurses. A significant increase in mean CD-RISC scores was detected among those who participated in self-initiated activities (p = 0.01). Initiating or participating in leader-led activities did not positively impact resilience scores. Further, clinical nurses who participated in leader-led activities were not more likely to participate in self-initiated activities.

CONCLUSIONS

This study supports self-initiated resilience-strengthening activities as beneficial to nurses, but not leader-led initiatives. These results are especially important for nursing leaders as they strive to reduce burnout, improve nurse retention and achieve exceptional practice quality.

From coping to building nurse manager resilience in rural workplaces in western Canada

AIM

To investigate the role stressors, and how coping strategies cultivated nurse managers' resilience in rural workplaces.

BACKGROUND

A stressful workplace can impair the mental and physical health of nurse managers leading to poor performance. Building and sustaining manager resilience in complex and stressful practice environments is necessary to attract and maintain competent and skilled managers.

METHOD

In this qualitative exploratory inquiry, a purposive sampling method was used to recruit 16 nurse managers in rural western Canada.

RESULTS

Coping strategies fostered manager's resilience that made their work meaningful, and included putting out fires, psychologically reframing a situation, serving others and receiving support.

CONCLUSIONS

Managers brought expertise, knowledge and skill to make their work meaningful and central to ongoing health service delivery in these rural communities. Nurse manager resilience can be strengthened by using evidence-based strategies in an increasingly complex health care environment.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT

Managers need to be supported and encouraged to develop awareness of their own protective factors as they cope with challenging situations. Building resilience through formal education, social support and meaningful recognition is an important focus for nurse leaders in establishing a healthy work environment and maintaining a stable nursing workforce.

Development and Validation of a Pioneer Scale on Service Leadership Behavior in the Service Economies

In response to the severe lack of leadership assessment tools in the Chinese context, the Service Leadership Behavior Scale was developed based on the Service Leadership Model proposed by Po Chung, the co-founder of DHL International. Utilizing responses from 4,486 Hong Kong undergraduates, this paper reports the findings of a validation study on the Short-Form Service Leadership Behavior Scale (SLB-SF-65). Previous findings based on exploratory factor analysis supported a six-factor 48-item solution (SLB-SF-48). With the removal of ten items, confirmatory factor analysis showed that the final 38-item scale (SLB-SF-38) possessed excellent internal consistency, concurrent validity, and factorial validity based on multigroup invariance analyses. Overall speaking, the present study underscores the utility of the SLB-SF-38 as an objective assessment instrument of service leadership behavior in the education, research and personnel training contexts.

What makes leaders resilient? An exploratory interview study

Can the boss take the heat? Is he or she tough enough for the job? Can they take it, endure the pressure, tolerate or stand up to it? Although we know that resilient leaders are essential for a healthy and efficient workforce, the resilience of leaders itself is still largely unexplored. Our study aims to identify distinctive resilience factors in leadership and help close this research gap. We interviewed 27 leaders from various industrial sectors, German regions and leadership positions. In a qualitative content analysis, we identified 77 individual, situational and behavioural factors that seem to impact on the resilience of leaders. We divided these factors into meaningful categories and integrated them into a framework appropriate for leadership. This framework shows that in addition to individual traits and abilities, situational factors (private and work environment) and behavioural factors (personal and interpersonal behaviour) are highly important and that leaders’ resilience results from an interaction of these factors. As most of the identified factors can be directly influenced by the leader or the organization, our study provides important insights into the effective development and nurturing of leaders’ resilience. Furthermore, the findings can be a helpful starting point for future empirical studies.

Nurse leader resilience: career defining moments

Resilience is an essential component of effective nursing leadership. It is defined as the ability to survive and thrive in the face of adversity. Resilience can be developed and internalized as a measure to improve retention and reduce burnout. Nurse leaders at all levels should develop these competencies to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex health care environment. Building positive relationships, maintaining positivity, developing emotional insight, creating work-life balance, and reflecting on successes and challenges are effective strategies for resilience building. Nurse leaders have a professional obligation to develop resilience in themselves, the teams they supervise, and the organization as a whole. Additional benefits include reduced turnover, reduced cost, and improved quality outcomes through organizational mindfulness.

Resilience and professional chaplaincy: a paradigm shift in focus

Research into the area of resilience provides a challenge and a great opportunity for professional chaplaincy. In this article, we will consider the challenge that the research primarily of George Bonanno of Columbia University offers to the traditional, clinical perspectives and assessments of professional chaplains serving in health care. Secondly, we will propose the practical implications for a wider paradigm and an expanded focus on intentionality and interventions of chaplains. Resilience is seen as a positive response possibility for those facing potentially traumatic events. It is understood to be a predominant response to traumatic events more often than the grief recovery model usually presumed to be active. Resilience has heuristic value and merits being factored in to professional chaplaincy as it relates to patient assessment, interventions, interdisciplinary care, staff and corporate support, and transcultural usefulness.