Supervisors info:
Ελισάβετ Πατηράκη, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Νοσηλευτικής, ΕΚΠΑ (Επιβλέπων)
Στυλιανός Κατσαραγάκης, Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Νοσηλευτικής, ΕΚΠΑ
Χατζοπούλου Μαρία, Ακαδημαϊκή Υπότροφος, Τμήμα Νοσηλευτικής, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
The present research has as its central research object the investigation of the relationship between mental resilience and the professional quality of life in nurses who participate in the care of chronically ill patients. Quantitative research was conducted using closed-ended self-report questionnaires. The study sample intelligibility was (N=80), and came from two private tertiary hospitals located in Attica. The Greek-weighted Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-25) for resilience and Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQol 5) for the quality of professional life were used. The CD-RISC-25 Resilience Scale is a brief self-rating of 25 items, all of which carry a 5-point response range rated from 0 (true) to 4 (almost always true), and is rated based on how the subject felt about last month. The scale score is based on the total sum of all items, each of which is scored from 0 to 4, and the total score ranges from 0 to 100, with higher scores reflecting higher resilience. The ProQol occupational quality of life scale is the most commonly used measure of the positive and negative effects of working with people experiencing highly stressful events. It consists of 30 items which are categorized into 3 subscales of 10 items. Ten items assess post-traumatic stress, ten items assess burnout, and another ten items assess compassion satisfaction. The ProQol 5 asks respondents to consider the frequency of their experiences at work in the past 30 days, on a scale from 1 (never) to 5 (very often). In terms of scoring, levels of compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress are low when the sum is 22 or lower, moderate when the sum is between 23 and 41, and high if the sum is 42 or more. Questions were also added on demographic and occupational characteristics such as gender, age, marital status, number and ages of children, place of residence, education, working hours, years of clinical experience in the hospital, unit of employment, the years of employment in the present unit, number of hours worked per week, and health and mental health problems. The social science statistical analysis package SPSS 25 was used for data management and statistical analysis. According to the results obtained, the overall mental resilience of the sample was satisfactory (71.22 ± 10.67). The same is true for the individual subscales of the ProQol 5. Specifically, compassion satisfaction was (38.75 ± 6.30), burnout was equal to (24.94 ± 5.04), while secondary traumatic stress was equal to (23.65 ± 5.48). In the correlation analysis between the scales, a positive and statistically significant correlation appeared between mental resilience and compassion satisfaction (r = 0.433, p = 0.001), a negative and statistically significant correlation between burnout and overall resilience (r = -0.342, p=0.002), while secondary traumatic stress and resilience did not show a statistically significant correlation. Regarding demographic characteristics, married nurses show higher mental resilience than single ones. Also, the number of children seems to have a significant effect on overall mental resilience as workers who have 2 children were observed to have better mental resilience than those who have 1 or 0 children. Also, nurses' age and years of service in the industry show a positive statistical correlation with mental resilience. These results show that those nurses who work with chronically ill patients, and show higher levels of psychological resilience, tend to have a higher quality of professional life. The results of the survey confirm the need to find ways to improve nurses' resilience, and offer useful information to Nursing Directors in order to increase compassion satisfaction and reduce burnout.
Keywords:
Chronically ill, ProQol 5, CD-RISC-25, Mental resilience, Quality of work life
