High resilience leads to better work performance in nurses: Evidence from South Asia

To find out how resilience level is related to work performance of nurses.

Resilience is a developable and teachable skill which helps to recover from adversities and continue functioning above the norm. Though combating negative effects at work such as burnout is widely researched, harnessing positive organisational effects such as work performance through resilience is yet to be well-established.

Cross-sectional study enrolled 230 nurses from Sri Lanka. The level of resilience at work and performance were assessed using culturally adapted and validated tools. How each resilience subscale predicted the nursing performance was assessed using bivariate correlation and linear regression analysis using ordinary least squares method.

The total resilience scale score demonstrated significant and strong positive correlations with all subdomains of nursing performance, as well as with overall performance (p < .05). In linear regression model, six out of seven subscales in resilience scale predicted 70.5% of variance of work performance.

Higher resilience level at work is associated with better working performance among nurses.

Nursing profession is well-known to be of highly stressful and fostering resilience would be extremely useful as an investment to combat such negative effects, while yielding positive organisational benefits such as better work performance.