Abstract
AIM: Nurses play roles in hospitals, families, society and other aspects and often face stress sources, such as heavy workload, doctor-patient conflict and medical accidents. Resilience can help the nurses to avoid or reduce various adverse consequences caused by stress sources; however, this phenomenon remains ill-defined and under-researched. The aim of this review was to summarize the experiences of development of nurses' resilience and explore the reasons for the formation of resilience by examining the findings of the existing qualitative studies. DESIGN: The review is a systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies. DATA SOURCES: PubMed, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Web of Science, Embase, and Ovid and Chinese databases include the following: Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Database (CECDB), VIP Database and China Biomedical Database (CBM). REVIEW METHODS: Relevant publications were identified by systematic searches across 11 databases in June 2021. All qualitative and mixed-method studies in English and Chinese that explored the experiences of development of nurses' resilience were included. The qualitative meta-synthesis followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) recommendations. Two independent reviewers selected the studies and assessed the quality of each study. Meta-synthesis was performed to integrate the results. RESULTS: A total of nine studies revealed 10 sub-themes and three descriptive themes: being psychologically strong, physical positive coping and adoption of external support. CONCLUSION: Several factors contributed to the development of nurses' resilience, and various supporting strategies in the nursing management and education are helpful to their adaption ability. However, it is necessary to focus on the cultivation of nurses' resilience to improve the quality of clinical nursing. Leaders or organizations are required to establish and sustain multifaceted strategies to improve nurse' resilience through scientific resilience training programmes and improved organizational support.