Professional values are personal beliefs about the worth of concepts or behaviors in a discipline. These beliefs lead to the development of standards from which to evaluate and act upon and are foundational to the practice of nursing. Education is essential to professional value acquisition and it is expected that students’ values are modified and expanded during the educational process.
Resilience is identified as the ability to successfully cope with or overcome adversity. Individuals with higher levels of resilience are more adaptable to change than those less resilient. Nurses are often required to work in environments with inadequate staffing, critically ill patients, and need to make rapid life-changing decisions. They interact daily with patients and caregivers in distress. These are but a few examples of why nursing requires a high-degree of resilience.
While resilience has been studied in numerous clinical populations, little is known about resilience in nursing students (Thomas & Revell, 2016) or the relationship between resilience and professional value acquisition. The purpose of this study was to investigate how resilience and professional values in baccalaureate nursing students change from program entry to graduation.
Methods
A non-experimental, longitudinal design was used in this study. A convenience sample was obtained from one university in the Southeast United States. Following IRB approval, the 14-item Resilience Scale (Wagnild, 2009), Nurses Professional Values Scale-Revised (Weis & Schank, 2009)), and demographic survey were administered to one cohort of baccalaureate nursing students (N=50) at three points in time: upon program entry, at the end of junior year, and at graduation. Internal consistency reliability of the study instruments were acceptable. Cronbach’s alpha for the 14-item Resilience Scale (RS-14) was .80 or greater and the Nurses Professional Values Scale (NPVS-R) was .89 or greater at each data point. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to determine whether there was a significant change over time in the study variables.
Results
The mean RS-14 score for entering baccalaureate nursing students was 83.38 (moderately high resilience) with a range of 38 (very low resilience) to 98 (high resilience). While the mean resilience scale score increased at each data point, there was a significant change in scores at the first and third collection periods. Resilience scores increased significantly (p = .02) from program entry to graduation. Students also entered the program reporting strong professional values orientation with a mean NPVS-R score of 114.94. However, mean NPVS-R scores decreased at each collection period and there was a significant (p > .01) decrease in NPVS-R scores from program entry to graduation. While the scores decreased as students progressed in the program, the mean score of 109.26 was indicative of strong professional values orientation. Additionally, there were significant (p ≤ .05) correlations between resilience and professional values orientation. At each data point, students who reported greater levels of resilience also reported greater professional values orientation.
Conclusion
Overall, baccalaureate nursing students in this sample entered the nursing program reporting high levels of resilience and strong professional values orientation. Resilience levels continued to increase throughout the program. While the professional value scores decreased as students progressed in the program, students in this sample reported stronger professional value orientation at graduation than nurses and nursing students examined in recent studies (Alfred et al., 2013; Brown, Lindell, Dolansky, & Garber, 2015; Fisher, 2014; Gallegos & Sortedahl, 2015; Lin et al., 2016). Higher levels of resilience and professional value orientation may help nursing students navigate the transition into the role of a practicing nurse. Further research is needed to examine how resilience and professional value orientation impact nursing workforce retention.