Exploring salutogenesis as a concept of health and wellbeing in nurses who thrive professionally

Abstract

Aim: To determine whether salutogenesis, a concept of health and wellbeing, can be identified in nurses who self-describe themselves as thriving professionally. Background: Nurse burnout can potentially impact clinical performance, patient safety, and increase the turnover of nurses, which all contribute to additional health care costs (Rushton, Batcheller, Schroeder & Donohue, 2015). The ability to not only avoid burnout, but to thrive in stressful environments is an important factor worth exploring. The salutogenic theory is related to this. Methods: This was a mixed method, exploratory, descriptive study which was undertaken to describe elements of the salutogenic theory, in survey data, from twelve nurses who describe themselves as “thriving” professionally. Qualitative data was analyzed for themes. Quantitative data was compared to the salutogenic model. Results: Qualitative data analysis revealed the importance of the following main themes: other people, passion, coping mechanisms, personal characteristics, and time. Quantitative data revealed the average Sense of Coherence (SOC) score, which measures a person’s perceived health, was 73.58 out of a possible 91 points. Ranking of scores revealed the four highest scoring means all correlated to the meaningfulness category of the SOC questionnaire.