Investigating the Relationship between Resilience and Uncertainty and its Intolerance in Nurses Working in Special Care Departments: A Cross-Sectional Study

Intensive Care Units (ICUs) are considered one of the most complex hospital units due to their high sensitivity. Therefore, nurses face challenges such as uncertainty that can affect nursing performance. The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the relationship between resilience and uncertainty and intolerance of uncertainty among nurses working in ICUs.

The present study was a cross-sectional study. By using the stratified random sampling method, 237 nurses working in adult ICUs in hospitals affiliated to the Tehran University of Medical Sciences were selected in 2022. Data were collected through demographic information questionnaires, uncertainty questionnaire and uncertainty intolerance questionnaire. Data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics at a significance level of less than 0.05.

The mean resilience score of nurses participating in the study was 20.4 with a standard deviation of 2.6. Furthermore, 75% of nurses achieved the average level of resilience. There was a significant positive correlation between resilience scores and intolerance of uncertainty in nurses (p<0.001, r=0.213) and a significant but weak positive correlation between resilience and uncertainty scores in nurses (p=0.004, r=0.188). So that with the increase of nurses' resilience scores, their uncertainty score generally increased.

The findings revealed that uncertainty and its intolerance have an inverse relationship with resilience, and this shows that uncertainty and its intolerance are complex concepts and components that can be affected by several factors that require further study in this area. On the other hand, resilience cannot be the solution to all the problems of nurses in clinical environments. As the findings in this study showed, increasing resilience has not been able to reduce uncertainty and intolerance, and this finding can be the beginning of other studies to identify predictors of uncertainty and intolerance.