Global prevalence of resilience in health care professionals: A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression

Aims: This review aims to examine the prevalence estimate of low resilience among health care professionals and identify the factors affecting the prevalence.

Background: Health care professionals experience high levels of stress. Understanding the health care professionals' resilience may provide an insight into how they perform in a highly stressed environment.

Evaluation: A comprehensive search of 11 databases was conducted. Studies that provided prevalence rates for low resilience among health care professionals working in a health care setting were included. Meta-analyses, sensitivity, subgroup analyses and meta-regression were conducted.

Key issues: Among 27,720 studies, 41 studies (N = 17,073) across 16 countries were included. The prevalence of low resilience was 26% (95% CI: 20-32). Subgroup analyses indicated that types of resilience measures affect resilience prevalence significantly. A higher prevalence of low resilience was observed among allied health professions during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Middle East.

Conclusions: This review indicated the prevalence of low resilience and type of resilience measurement instruments that affected the prevalence.

Implications for nursing management: This review provides a roadmap to design tailored, discipline-specific and sustainable resilience training for nurses. Nursing managers should monitor the working hours and workload of nursing staffing in order to provide a protective working environment. This is a systematic review, and the PROSPERO registration number is CRD42021235350.