Resilience and its Relationship with Exposure to Violence in Emergency Nurses

Workplace violence (WPV) is a detrimental factor affecting nurses’ health and performance. Individual protective factors such as resilience can assist nurses in coping with and adapting to workplace adversity.

The present study was aimed to determine the relationship between resilience and exposure to WPV in emergency nurses.

This cross‑sectional study was carried out on 118 emergency nurses in Tabriz educational hospitals, Iran. The participants were selected through a convenience sampling method. A demographic questionnaire, the Conner‑Davidson Resilience Scale, and the Modified Questionnaire of Workplace Violence in the health sector were used for data collection. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, logistic regression analysis, t‑test, and one‑way analysis of variance.

The mean resilience score of nurses was 25.05 ± 5.79 in the possible range of 0–40. Most of the cases of violence were verbal threats (80.5%), and 56.7% of the exposures occurred during the night shift. Logistic regression showed that lower resilience predicted verbal threats (P = 0.001) and physical attacks (P = 0.038) against the individual. In addition to resilience, working on the night shift significantly predicted verbal threats (P = 0.008) against nurses.

The resilience score was lower in nurses who exposed to violence. Empowerment programs are suggested to improve the resilience of nurses.