Aim
To identify nurse leaders’ strategies to cultivate nurse resilience.
Background
High nursing turnover rates and nursing shortages are prominent phenomena in health care. Finding ways to promote nurse resilience and reduce nurse burnout is imperative for nursing leaders.
Methods
This is a qualitative descriptive study that occurred from November 2017 to June 2018. This study explored strategies to foster nurse resilience from nurse leaders who in this study were defined as charge nurses, nurse managers and nurse executives of a tertiary hospital in the United States. A purposive sampling method was used to have recruited 20 nurse leaders.
Results
Seven strategies are identified to cultivate nurse resilience: facilitating social connections, promoting positivity, capitalizing on nurses’ strengths, nurturing nurses’ growth, encouraging nurses’ self‐care, fostering mindfulness practice and conveying altruism.
Conclusions
Fostering nurse resilience is an ongoing effort. Nurse leaders are instrumental in building a resilient nursing workforce. The strategies identified to foster nurse resilience will not only impact the nursing staff but also improve patient outcomes.
Implications for Nursing Management
The strategies presented are simple and can be easily implemented in any settings. Nurse leaders have an obligation to model and enable evidence‐based strategies to promote nurses’ resilience.
Pica exists, and might be more common than healthcare providers assume. Although this study did not show specific pregnancy complications associated with pica, other studies have shown anemia and lead poisoning among women who practice pica. It is not clear that patients volunteer information about pica, so it would be helpful if nurses queried patients at each prenatal visit regarding pica practice. Discussion of pica practices should be based on a nonjudgmental model, for pica may have strong cultural implications, and may be practiced for cultural reasons unknown to the nurse.
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