Resilience is defined as an individual's capability to bounce back from hardship. Nurses face adversity every day that is not a characteristic of other professions. Not only do nurses carry an emotional burden from dealing with patients and their families who are, in turn, go-ing through difficult and traumatic events, but they also often suffer from workplace burn-out, as many other professionals do. The aims of this study were to explore the resilience of nurses in this challenging profession and study the extent to which personal characteristics and factors contribute to nurses’ resilience. This was a cross-sectional descriptive study that included 119 nurses. Data were collected from participants through a demographic and per-sonal characteristics questionnaire, the Trait Resilience Checklist (TRC) and the State Resili-ence Checklist (SRC). Results showed that 40.3% of nurses demonstrated extreme levels of resilience determined by TRC scores between 65 and 75 and 40.3% of nurses demonstrated extreme levels of resilience determined by SRC scores between 87 and 90. Consequential difference in extreme resilience was described by the personal characteristics of nurses who have siblings, who own a house, who only work the day shift, whose spouse’s education is university level, who have no problem with the work team and who have a work commute from outside the locality of their workplace. The explorative factor analysis performed with a varimax rotation on the items of the SRC recorded three factors that interpreted 56% of the total variance; results of the analysis of the TRC showed that five factors explained 62.7% of the total variance. The authors concluded that resilience appears to be influenced by some personal characteristics as well as other attributes and environmental factors. Certain resili-ence factors were identified in extremely resilient nurses and the level of nurse resilience stayed unchanged from trait resilience to state resilience for these nurses. These findings highlight the relevance of management-endorsed programs for resilience-based strategies to develop resilience among nurses.

Resilience is defined as an individual's capability to bounce back from hardship. Nurses face adversity every day that is not a characteristic of other professions. Not only do nurses carry an emotional burden from dealing with patients and their families who are, in turn, go-ing through difficult and traumatic events, but they also often suffer from workplace burn-out, as many other professionals do. The aims of this study were to explore the resilience of nurses in this challenging profession and study the extent to which personal characteristics and factors contribute to nurses’ resilience. This was a cross-sectional descriptive study that included 119 nurses. Data were collected from participants through a demographic and per-sonal characteristics questionnaire, the Trait Resilience Checklist (TRC) and the State Resili-ence Checklist (SRC). Results showed that 40.3% of nurses demonstrated extreme levels of resilience determined by TRC scores between 65 and 75 and 40.3% of nurses demonstrated extreme levels of resilience determined by SRC scores between 87 and 90. Consequential difference in extreme resilience was described by the personal characteristics of nurses who have siblings, who own a house, who only work the day shift, whose spouse’s education is university level, who have no problem with the work team and who have a work commute from outside the locality of their workplace. The explorative factor analysis performed with a varimax rotation on the items of the SRC recorded three factors that interpreted 56% of the total variance; results of the analysis of the TRC showed that five factors explained 62.7% of the total variance. The authors concluded that resilience appears to be influenced by some personal characteristics as well as other attributes and environmental factors. Certain resili-ence factors were identified in extremely resilient nurses and the level of nurse resilience stayed unchanged from trait resilience to state resilience for these nurses. These findings highlight the relevance of management-endorsed programs for resilience-based strategies to develop resilience among nurses.