The effects of psychological resilience on aggression: A study on nurses

Psychological resilience is a process that includes a person's ability to cope with the difficulties encountered in life. Nurses have an important role in the health sector and perform their duty in a stressful and demanding working environment. The aim of this study is to understand the relationship between psychological resilience of nurses and aggression. It can be stated that psychological resilience levels and aggression levels of nurses have significant effects on their professional performance, motivation, job satisfaction and psychological well-being. However, there are a limited number of studies on this issue in the literature. Aggression may include physical, verbal or psychological aggressive behaviours towards nurses and may negatively affect their safety and psychological well-being. The research aims to help us better understand the relationship between psychological resilience and aggression levels of nurses and play a fundamental role in the development of professional support programmes and interventions. The results obtained contribute to the determination of the steps that can be taken to increase the psychological resilience levels of nurses and reduce their aggression levels. The population of the study consisted of 970 nurses working in Meram Medical Faculty Hospital. 276 nurses participated in the study. 77,1% of the participants were female and 61,9% were married. 76,3% of the participants were undergraduate and postgraduate graduates and 23,7% were high school and associate degree graduates. 44,6% of the participants are between the ages of 18-28 and 16,2% of the participants are over 39 years old. When we look at the years of employment, 62,9% of the participants have worked between 1-10 years and 37,1% have worked 11 years or more. When we look at the place of work of the participants, 68,3% of them work in the field of Basic Medicine and Clinical Medicine, 31,7% in the field of Surgical Medicine. Before analysing the obtained data according to some variables, the mean and standard deviation values of the scales used in the research were taken. According to the results of the analysis; the mean score of the Psychological Resilience Scale was found to be 3,16. The mean score for the Aggression Scale was 2,45, 2,04 for the Physical Aggression sub-dimension, 2,50 for the Anger sub-dimension, 2,59 for the Hostility sub-dimension and 2,71 for the Verbal Aggression sub-dimension. According to the results of the study, it is seen that of the nurses professional experience and gender affect their psychological resilience levels. It was found that as the professional years and experience of the nurses increased, their psychological resilience levels also increased. This shows that professional experience has a positive effect on psychological resilience.