Resilience in Nursing

Running head: RESILIENCE IN NURSING
RESILIENCE IN NURSING
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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RESILIENCE IN NURSING
Introduction:
Adversities are common unpleasant parts of life. Resilience is the ineffable quality, which
knocks down the lives of individuals but at the same time allows them to come back being
stronger than before (Thomas and Revell 2016). It is important for every individual in the present
generation to find their ways to rise from the ashes rather than letting the failures and difficulties
overcome them and drain their energies and affect their self-respect (McGowan et al. 2016). This
attribute is considered to be one of the essential skills required for providing high quality nursing
care that has positive impacts on the health conditions of the patient. This assignment would be a
reflective one describing how I understood the importance of resilience and developed it over
time. Moreover, Gibbs reflection cycle would be used for developing the reflective journal that
will also shed light on the importance of this aspect of nursing on human care services.
Description:
During the initial days of my university, I had faced huge number of obstacles. I was not
being able to adjust myself with the other classmates and even with the new learning
environment. Because of this, my grades were falling apart in the initial examinations and
projects. This made others criticize my knowledge and skills stating that I would never be able to
become a nurse. They stated that I could never gain knowledge and confidence required by
professionals who provide care service to patients in times of their ailments. Such criticisms
started affecting me and they reached to such an extent in course of time that I decided to leave
pursuing my dreams of becoming a nurse leader in life. However, it was during such critical
times, my parents had a detailed discussion with me, and they made me understand that failures
are inevitable parts of life. Not being able to overcome such failures and withdrawing oneself

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from the motive is the real failure. Their strong words helped me look towards the better sides of
failures and I developed a strong will to overcome all failures and proceed in life without feeling
down. With the help and advice of my family members and well-wishers, I overcame all hurdles.
My grades developed in course of time because of the attribute of resilience. Even during the
time of my placements, I failed to meet the nursing standards in a number of incidents. I realized
that I do not have enough clinical and non-pharmacological knowledge required to care for
patients. These made me upset and disappointed and I started thinking that such gaps my affect
the health of patients. Similarly, I lost my motivation and thought of withdrawing. I remembered
the struggles that went on during the earlier part of my university years and how my resilience
helped me overcome it. I got motivated and encouraged. I thought of not losing hope. Gradually,
my confidence started to increase during the placement and made me learn many new insights
into nursing. This helped me regain back my trust on my own skills and I became prepared to
face the real world of healthcare again.
Feelings:
In the initial days of the university, I used to feel demotivated. I used to often get upset
with myself as I could not successfully complete my assignments or meet up the requirements of
the project like that of my classmates. I got frustrated when I saw that other classmates had
successfully adjusted to the new learning environment and were handling the pressures well.
These negative feelings gradually made me lose my confidence making me develop a feeling of
withdrawing from all. Similar had been the cases when I was attending the placements. Repeated
failures in meeting the quality standards and required treatment procedures for the patients made
me feel not only upset and hopeless about myself but also guilty or not being able to ensure
satisfaction of the patients. However, the strong words that were told to me by my parents had

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been my biggest strength and companion throughout the years that had helped me feel confident
and overcome various struggles in lives.
Evaluation:
The bad part of the experiences was that it had initially affected my internal motivation
and destroyed my self-confidence and self-esteem. I had gone through various difficult struggles
to overcome the phase. However, these experiences have more positive aspects than that of
negative aspects. These experiences taught me the importance of resilience. It is important for
every individual not to concentrate on the failures but more on the ways of overcoming the
failures, learning from the failures and then emerging out as more evolved individuals (Reyes et
al. 2015). In the present days of competitive world, every professional irrespective of the
industry he works, has to go through several struggles that might affect self-confidence, morale
and will power. Succumbing to the pressure might lead to overall loss of the individual, as he can
never reach the zenith of success that he had aspired in life (Rushton et al. 2017). In such
situation, the attribute of resilience help an individual to overcome all such struggles. Thomas
and Russelin (2018) are of the opinion that every healthcare provider has to face a number of
stress as well as difficult situations while they provide care for patients. This puts the healthcare
professionals at an increased risk of anxiety, depression, burnout and even stress-related illness.
From this paper, it have been found that nurses especially are more prone to both psychological
and physical disorders as nursing profession comes with high pressure situations and unique
forms of stress. Lekan et al. (2018) had stated that resilience training and coping mechanisms are
exceptionally essential for management of work-life balance mainly for those who are
responsible for delivering medical care. This is because their care is directly associated with the
health quality and safety of the patients who had come to seek for their assistance. Hence, the