Abstract
BACKGROUND: Nursing professionals working in high-threat, low-resource occupational settings experience chronic exposure to critical incidents and systemic inadequacies in support. This context highlights the significance of psychological resilience as a crucial protective factor against work stress. Prior research has often oversimplified the concept of resilience by employing reductive assumptions and binary classifications, which consequently restricts the comprehension of the diversity within this population. METHODS: This study utilized latent profile analysis (LPA), a multidimensional approach for subgroup identification, to explore psychological resilience profiles among 515 nurses from 13 tertiary hospitals across six provinces in China. Using Mplus 8.3 software, we investigated the degree to which these resilience subgroups moderate the relationship between work stress and coping strategies. RESULTS: The LPA identified three distinct profiles of psychological resilience among nurses: the Resource-Constrained & Maladaptive (RCM) subgroup, the Balanced-Stable (BS) subgroup, and the Environmentally Driven-Strategically Adaptive (EDSA) subgroup. In the RCM subgroup, work stress does not significantly predict either passive or active coping strategies, and the moderating effect of psychological resilience is also found to be non-significant. In the BS subgroup, work stress significantly positively predicts passive coping, while psychological resilience serves to mitigate this prediction. Conversely, work stress does not significantly negatively predict active coping, and the moderating effect of psychological resilience in this context is also not significant. In the EDSA subgroup, work stress significantly positively predicts passive coping, while psychological resilience serves to mitigate this prediction. Conversely, work stress significantly negatively predicts active coping, and psychological resilience enhances this prediction. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that heterogeneous resilience profiles significantly affect the differentiation of stress-coping mechanisms among nurses. This supports the implementation of a graded intervention framework aimed at the precise targeting of specific subgroups. CLINICAL TRIAL NUMBER: Not applicable.