Resilience and Professional Joy: A Toolkit for Nurse Leaders

Nursing leadership effectiveness and role tenure play a pivotal role in the development and sustainment of healthy professional cultures. Nurse leaders who intentionally develop their core competencies demonstrate higher success rates, to include overall job performance, satisfaction, and longevity. Consequently, nurse leaders must pay attention to health care industry changes to understand the future leader competencies needed for professional relevance. Nationally focused health care topics inform nurse leaders of emerging requisite knowledge and skills necessary for health system transformation. One such subject of national dialogue is joy at work as a necessary element of clinician well-being and subsequent optimal patient health. Although joy comprises multiple facets, resilience consistently appears as the core ingredient of clinician well-being and professional joy. Data indicates that nurses desire purposeful and meaningful work in organizations that support their health, which presents a leader challenge given the current health care delivery system. Clinicians report high rates of fatigue, and though burnout and stress are not new issues, it is now recognized that clinician health mediates patient health and organizational outcomes. Thus, national efforts require that leaders need to build a resilient workforce and a healthy environment that supports care for the clinician. Ample empirical evidence exists on the benefits of resilience as an essential component of good health, an additive element of professional happiness. Leaders must develop advanced competencies in nurse resilience, well-being, engagement, and work satisfaction to ensure the delivery of safe, high-quality, cost-effective care. Given the national focus on clinician health, a translation of research provides nurse leaders with practical tools designed to increase individual, collective, and organizational resilience that supports a culture of professional joy.