Resilience and Professional Quality of Life: Critical Attributes for Military Healthcare Professionals

Tuesday, 23 July 2013: 4:10 PM

Colleen A. Leners, DNP, RN, FNP-BC, ENP
Department of Surgical Services C5, Navy Medical Center San Diego, San Diego, CA
Ramona Sowers, DNP, FNP-BC
Compensation and pension, Durham VA, Durham, North Carolina, NC

Learning Objective 1: Identify the components of the professional quality of life scales.

Learning Objective 2: Distinguish the risk factors of compassion fatigue, burnout, as it realates to resilience of healthcare providers.

Purpose:

  The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship between resilience and professional quality of life among military health care providers.

Methods:

The methods includes description of research design, sample, setting, and instruments used for measurement.  

Results: description of sample demographics, descriptive presentation of study variables, and examination of professional quality of life and resilience levels among deployed military personnel. Comparisons and correlational analysis of the study variables are examined.The findings of this exploratory descriptive, correlational quantitative study of the relationship between resilience and professional quality of life among military providers. The sample size was 168 military medical providers who were primarily white, married, and between the ages of 23-66+ (with 57% falling between 40-55 years of age). The providers were highly experienced, with over 30% of the sample having greater than 21+ years in both the military and professional experience. The majority of the sample had a master’s degree. The correlation between resilience and professional quality of life was significant in all three subgroups, with compassion satisfaction p =.00, burnout p = .03, and secondary trauma p =.00. The additional analysis showed a significant difference in providers deployed to Iraq versus non deployed providers.

Conclusion:

The overall purpose of this study was to describe the relationship of resilience to professional quality of life in military medical providers. Resilience was evaluated using scores that rated compassion satisfaction, burnout and compassion fatigue. The providers were deployed and non-deployed.

This study showed a significant positive relationship between resilience and professional quality of life in military healthcare providers.  Some of the current study’s results did agree with data from previous literature. This study highlighted the need for a larger study with a more representative sample in order to adequately evaluate these important factors in retention and accession of military healthcare providers.