Correlations of resilience with coping strategies, and the underlying factors in the nurses working in COVID‑19 hospitals

As the core of a health‑care team, nurses play a key role in promoting community health, and their job involves witnessing human suffering and pain in health‑care settings. The present study aimed to evaluate the correlations between resilience coping strategies, and the underlying factors in the nurses working in COVID‑19 hospitals.

This descriptive, cross‑sectional study was conducted on 320 nurses working in COVID‑19 wards for a minimum of 6 months in 2021. The participants were selected via multistage sampling. Data were collected using demographic, resilience, and coping strategy instruments. Data analysis was performed in SPSS version 20.

The mean resilience score was 76.94 ± 11.33. The mean scores of emotion‑focused and problem‑focused strategies were 59.65 ± 4.40 and 96.08 ± 5.38, respectively. The assessment of the correlation between resilience with the emotion‑focused and problem‑focused strategies showed a positive significant correlation (r = 0.25; P < 0.001 and r = 0.33; P < 0.001, respectively).

According to the results, the nurses working in COVID‑19 wards mostly adopted problem‑focused strategies in difficult work conditions depending on the required care provision. Both coping strategies significantly affected the subscales of resilience in the nurses. Therefore, it is recommended that special attention be paid to teaching strategies to cope with anxiety and resilience and develop problem‑solving skills in nursing personnel during the emergence and outbreak of new diseases in order to reduce their anxiety.