Distress, support and psychological resilience of psychiatric nurses as second victims after violence: A cross‐sectional study

Abstract

Aim The aim is to explore the impact of violence and psychological resilience on psychiatric nurses as second victims. Background Workplace violence is a public health concern, seriously influencing medical staff's physical and mental health. However, few pieces of research have concentrated on psychiatric nurses as second victims. Method The socio‐demographic data, violence‐related data, psychological resilience scale, the Chinese version of the Second Victim Experience and Support Tool were applied to conduct a cross‐sectional survey on nurses from psychiatric hospitals. The multiple linear regression model identified significant variables associated with violence‐related injury and resilience. Results A total of 683 nurses completed the survey, of whom 88.3% were women. The average scores of the second victims' experience and support, support and distress were 3.45 ± 0.43, 3.71 ± 0.57 and 3.19 ± 0.67, respectively. Physical violence, psychological violence, psychological influence and nursing work environment were positively correlated with the experience and support of the second victims, and innocuous violence was a negative factor, which explains 20.6% of the variation. Moreover, physical injury, nursing work environment, resilience restructuring, physical violence, psychological violence, psychological impact and disagreement about the existence of violence explained 14.8% of the distress. The innocuous violence, psychological violence and nursing work environment explained 46.2% of the support. Conclusions Our findings suggest that nurses who are second victims after the violence mainly suffer from severe psychological distress and receive the least support for the same. Implication for nursing management The study provides clues to help nursing managers' emphasis on the distress and support of second victims and provides targeted intervention based on the relevant factors and these results. The article is a cross‐sectional study of psychiatric nurses, which has been approved by the ethics committee of the hospital before the survey. All the nurses who participated in the survey have been informed and agreed.

Resilience and mental health nursing: An integrative review of updated evidence

“…trait‐like, capacity or process). Authors' referred to knowledge of resilience derived from several fields including psychology ( n = 5; Chang et al, 2019; Delgado et al, 2020; Delgado et al, 2021; Delgado et al, 2022; Foster et al, 2020), nursing ( n = 5; Dahan et al, 2022; Dogan & Boyacıoglu, 2021; Henshall et al, 2020;Majrabi et al, 2021; Xu et al, 2021), both nursing and psychology ( n = 4; Abram & Jacobowitz, 2021; Dehvan et al, 2018; Ramalisa et al, 2018; Xu et al, 2022) and mental health nursing (Sukut et al, 2022). One study acknowledged there is a lack of an agreed definition of resilience in mental health nursing (Delgado et al, 2020), and two others noted that the primary focus of resilience research in mental health nursing has been on individual resilience rather than inclusive of its complex and multidimensional nature (Dahan et al, 2022; Delgado et al, 2020).…”

“…In eight studies, resilience was viewed as a personal quality, a capacity or an ability to cope (Dehvan et al, 2018; Henshall et al, 2020; Xu et al, 2022), to overcome challenges (Majrabi et al, 2021; Xu et al, 2021), to bounce back from adversity (Abram & Jacobowitz, 2021) or resist and thrive against adversities (Dogan & Boyacioglu, 2021; Ramalisa et al, 2018). Chang et al (2019) defined resilience as a ‘positive trait’ (p. 1) and stated ‘resilience was found to be a coping technique endorsed by mental health professionals’ to manage work‐related stress (p. 2).…”

“…As this was a new and self-developed item, it is difficult to draw any conclusions or comparisons about the resilience levels of these MHNs to those in other studies. Two studies used the Chinese version of a psychiatric resilience scale of nurses compiled by Lin et al (2020) in the same sample of n = 683 Chinese MHNs (Xu et al, 2021(Xu et al, , 2022. The mean resilience score was 89.09 and no interpretation was provided.…”

Nurses' second victim experience, job insecurity, and turnover intention: A latent profile analysis

“…Previous studies about the second victim nurses focused on the whole group, and these results reflected the overall characteristics of the investigated population, ignoring the heterogeneity among the second victims (Habibzadeh et al, 2020; Xu et al, 2022). However, heterogeneity among individuals reduces the accuracy of the results, and the individualized experience of the second victim cannot be truly reflected.…”

The relationship between physicians' ingroup favoritism to patients and workplace violence: regulatory role of physicians' psychological resilience

“…A recent study shows that a higher PR enables healthcare workers to face better with incidents at work (Guo et al ., 2018). Physicians may experience PR rather than grief because PR often avoids or reduces stressors (Xu et al ., 2022). PR may decrease the violence repeatedly happening to the same victim or colleagues (Bonanno, 2004; Walinga, 2013).…”