The effect of dispositional resilience on the relationship between professional quality of life and psychological distress factors of nurses during the pandemic: A three-wave longitudinal study

Background: COVID-19 overwhelmed all healthcare workers, especially nurses, who worked tirelessly in patient care in extremely stressful situations. Italy, with its hospital overcrowding and staff shortages, exacerbated these negative consequences. Design: A three-wave prospective longitudinal-design was adopted to use validated scales to examine the trend of stress, anxiety, depression and resilience on the professional quality of life of nurses who worked during the pandemic. During an 8-month period, a sample of 411 individuals was recruited and surveyed three times. Results: Resilience showed an increasing positive trend from the first to the third wave, increasing its effects on the outcomes and demonstrating its important protective role. The compassion fatigue showed progressively higher scores in the three waves, indicating greater workload perception and greater difficulty in managing the patients' perceived stress. Burnout increased in the first compared to second waves but decreased significantly in the third wave, due to the effect of resilience on burnout that was significantly stronger in the third wave. Conclusion: Our findings align with the literature about the role of resilience and emphasize the importance of investing in strategies aimed at developing resilience in healthcare workers and providing prevention and assistance to them in terms of job demands and unsustainable stressors.