Self-management of recovery: implications for nursing practice

This article describes and discusses differences in responses to a 60-item survey instrument, the Carolina Self-Regulation Inventory (CSRI) from a selected sample of university faculty and staff. The CSRI was designed to measure the types of self-regulation strategies (SRS) individuals use to facilitate their recovery from illness episodes. When the CSRI was developed, 1,306 university employees participated in the survey. Four hundred eighty (36%) employees classified themselves as faculty; 346 (26%), staff; 418 (32%), midlevel administrators; and 62 (6%), blue-collar workers. This report focuses on the differences between the faculty and staff groups in the survey. Analysis revealed that the staff used a variety of strategies and had higher statistically significant means on the following CSRI subscales: visualization (t = 2.53, P less than .01), self-talk (t = 6.801, P less than .001), and external attention deployment strategies (t = 4.08, P less than .001). No significant differences were found between faculty and staff in the use of exercise and physical activity or interactive self-regulation strategies. Higher-educated faculty women tended to use fewer SRS when compared with female staff (F = 4.70; df = 8.819; P = .0009). Faculty women were similar to faculty men in their use of SRS. Female staff used significantly more SRS when compared with faculty of both genders and male staff (t = 2.81, P = .05). Nursing implications of self-regulation nursing assessments are discussed in terms of nursing interventions and need for more research.