Nurses have a hard time disconnecting from work, and may benefit from additional workplace resources that support them in doing so, according to findings from a new Press Ganey report on nurse resiliency.
The report, published May 13, is based on an analysis of data from more than 345,000 registered nurses in Press Ganey's database of more than 2 million responses collected throughout 2023.
Below are four key findings from the report:
- Nurses demonstrate strong resilience, but struggle to decompress. Overall, nurses report moderately high resilience (4.23 on a 5-point scale.) Activation, which refers to a sense of purpose and ability to find meaning in work, is also high at 4.56. However, nurses' decompression scores are the lowest at 3.90.
- Resilience — which the report defines as the ability to recover from or adjust easily to change — varies by generation, gender. Overall, older generations tend to have higher resilience than Millennials and Gen Z: Baby boomers have an average score of 4.32; Gen X: 4.25; Millennials: 4.18; and Gen Z at 4.13.
Compared to men, women experience higher activation, which suggests women have a stronger emotional connection to their work and more difficulty decompressing on their days off.
- Nearly 30% of nurses believe their organization doesn't consistently show them respect, despite respect being the top driver of workforce engagement.
- Decompression huddles are a strategy to build resilience and foster collaboration. The huddles are brief, daily meetings where nursing teams can prioritize remaining tasks that should be done before the end of a shift. Press Ganey also recommended building in time to recognize employees and ensure any lingering questions before the next shift are addressed.
The full report can be found here.