Critical Resilience for Nurses

Book excerpt: The nursing profession is under pressure. Financial demands, student debt, the target culture, political scrutiny in the wake of major care scandals and increasing workloads are all taking their toll on professional morale and performance. This timely book considers the meaning of resilience in this adverse context and explains why measures to preserve individual nurses’ and students’ well-being are flawed if they don’t take into account wider political and organizational perspectives. Arguing that healthcare can be thought about and experienced differently, this book: provides a summary of the latest research on resilience, explaining its relevance and also limitations for nurses; considers debates about compassion and highlights the effects of policy agendas on nurse education and nursing work; re-evaluates nursing’s professional identity, including where nursing has come from and the effects of class, gender and race on its powerbase; assesses the role of politics and social media, both in driving change and feeding resistance; and introduces the idea of critical resilience as a complete framework for resisting bullying and fostering survival and change in the nursing workforce. Direct, upbeat, at times provocative and witty, this agenda-setting book enables nurses to understand why they feel the way they do. It also lists what opportunities are available to them to change, resist and survive in what has become a complex, challenging – if still deeply rewarding – line of work.