The Relationship between Resilience and Professional Quality of Life among Nurses in Secondary Hospitals, Northeastern Region

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to study the resilience, professional quality of life, and to study the relationship between resilience and professional quality of life of nurses in secondary care hospitals in the northeastern region of Thailand. The sample consisted of 138 professional nurses selected using multistage random sampling.  Research tools included three questionnaires: 1) a personal characteristics questionnaire, 2) the Resilience Scale questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of 0.88, and 3) the Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL5) tool with an overall reliability coefficient of 0.85. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rank correlation.

The results illustrated that the overall professional quality of life among the sample was at a moderate level, with a mean score of 30.30(S.D. = 0.58), while the mean score
for resilience was at a high level (𝑥̅ = 2.65, S.D. = 0.31). There was a moderate positive correlation between resilience and compassion satisfaction (r_s = 0.559, p < 0.01); however, the relationship between resilience and professional quality of life showed no significant correlation (r_s = 0.159, p > 0.05). When considering each dimension, it was found that resilience exhibited a moderate negative correlation with burnout (r_s = -0.383, p < 0.01), while considering each the dimensions of professional quality of life, compassion satisfaction (CS) had the highest mean score (𝑥̅ = 37.59, S.D. = 0.59), followed by burnout (BO) (𝑥̅ = 25.84, S.D. = 0.46), and compassion fatigue (CF) (𝑥̅ = 24.49, S.D. = 0.68). These findings suggest that nursing administrators should screen resilience and the nurses’ professional quality of life periodically and also use resilience as a strategy to enhance the nurses’ professional quality of life.