Professional Resilience among Trauma Emergency Department Nurses in Iran: A Qualitative Study

Nursing staff’s professional resilience plays an important role in overcoming the stressful and adverse situations common to the trauma emergency department and helps to achieve positive outcomes. 

This study intended to explore the concept of resiliency among Iranian trauma emergency department nurses. 

Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 21 trauma emergency department nurses and analysed through a deductive content analysis based on the general conceptual model of resilience derived from King and Rothstein’s study. 

All codes were nested into the four main categories of the above-mentioned model including: 1) Personal characteristics; 2) Opportunities, supports and resources; 3) Self-regulatory processes; 4) Positive outcomes. Some new sub-categories including Professional abilities (sub-category of Personal characteristics) and Cooperation with colleagues and Volunteers’ declaration of readiness (sub-categories of opportunities, supports and resources) were developed in this study. In the positive outcomes category, three sub-categories including Improved professional abilities, Personal growth, and Job retention were developed. 

Our results demonstrated that Iranian trauma emergency department nurses could achieve positive outcomes using specific affective, cognitive, and behavioural personality traits, professional abilities and effective external supports from different resources during self-regulatory processes. It is suggested that nurses should be selected for work in the emergency department based on appropriate characteristics and skills.