Resilience: increasing our bouncebackability

Resilience is frequently associated as being essential to the practice of nursing, with a broad understanding that being resilient means that an individual can turn challenges into opportunities, whilst also learning from these situations. Resilience is viewed as a state of positive adaptation, essentially by the individual, to adversity. Adversity needs to be present for resilient behaviour, such as ‘bouncing back’, to occur.¹ 

The ability to ‘bounce back’ is quite a tall order for nurses in the current climate. Challenges are occurring with increasing frequency, with adversity within the context of emotionally demanding work and difficult working conditions, a daily event. Nurses are not ‘bouncing’ back, citing stress and poor work/life balances, being significant factors for individuals leaving the profession from June 2021 to June 2022.²