Title : Resiliency for nurse educators: Incorporating resiliency training for nursing faculty
Abstract:
Background: Nursing education settings are increasingly challenged by workforce shortages, rising faculty workload demands, and escalating levels of stress and burnout. These pressures threaten faculty well-being, retention, and the quality of nursing education, underscoring the need for innovative, evidence-based leadership strategies that support professional sustainability. Resilience has been identified in the literature as a critical protective factor that enhances adaptability, well-being, and leadership capacity among nurses and nurse educators. However, scalable and accessible resilience-building interventions for nursing faculty remain limited. This quality improvement project reflects a leadership-driven, evidence-based approach to strengthening faculty resilience in response to a rapidly changing academic and healthcare environment.
Methods: A quantitative pre- and post-intervention design was used to evaluate the impact of a self-paced, online resiliency training program implemented for full-time undergraduate nursing faculty. Resilience levels were measured using the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10) administered before and after program completion. Descriptive statistics were analyzed to assess changes in resilience scores, and qualitative feedback was collected through open-ended post-survey questions to capture faculty perceptions of the intervention.
Results: The post-intervention findings demonstrated an increase in mean CD-RISC-10 scores from 33.27 to 35, indicating a clinically meaningful improvement in resilience. Qualitative feedback revealed enhanced self-awareness, increased confidence in stress management, and greater utilization of adaptive coping strategies. The convergence of quantitative and qualitative data suggests that brief, technology-enabled, self-paced resilience training can positively influence faculty well-being.
Conclusion: This project highlights an innovative, evidence-based strategy to promote faculty resilience in academic nursing programs, which can be easily translated into clinical practice or infused into nursing program curricula to prepare students for their careers. By leveraging flexible, technology-driven interventions, nursing leaders can support faculty well-being, strengthen workforce sustainability, and model resiliency behaviors for students. Integrating resilience-building initiatives into faculty development represents a transformative approach to shaping the future of nursing education and leadership in a changing world.
