An Investigation of the Relationships between Self-directedness in Learning and Resilience Among Undergraduate Nursing Students

Nursing is a demanding and dynamic profession with emotional challenges of seeing human suffering and which requires an enormous amount of ever changing knowledge in order to provide optimal care (Herd et al., 2016; Salmond & Echevarria, 2017). Nurses must possess both self-directedness, to maintain the current knowledge and skills, and resilience, to overcome the obstacles in their daily practice. The current and projected nursing shortage has forced the nursing profession to search for alternatives to increase the number of RN to meet demand. Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) programs have been developed in an attempt to meet that growing demand (Cangelosi & Whitt, 2005). ABSN students are adult learners and their educational and life experience make them different from traditional students so that using the same teaching methods may not be appropriate (Knowles, 1989; Tanner, 2002; Young & Diekelmann, 2002).The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between self-directedness and resilience among undergraduate nursing students. Participants (n=78) were undergraduate nursing students at a large, four-year, public university in the southeastern United States. Participants completed the PRO-SDLS (Stockdale, 2003), measuring SDL, and the CD-RISC (Connor & Davidson, 2003), measuring resilience, as well as age, gender, type of nursing program, and highest degree earned prior to nursing program. Correlational tests, independent samples t-tests, MANOVA, and chi square tests were conducted to identify significant relationships and differences among these variables.Results indicated a significant positive relationship between SDL and resilience (r = .55, p<.001). Participants who are highly self-directed are also highly resilient. Significant positive relationships were found among the PRO-SDLS four factors (initiative, control, self-efficacy, and motivation) and resilience. This study also found a significant difference between type of program and level of self-directedness, resilience, age, and highest degree earned.Implications for practice include introducing the constructs of SDL and resilience to undergraduate nursing students, as well as developing nursing curriculum to foster self-directedness in learning and resilience. Recommendations for future research include a replication of this study using a larger, more diverse sample across multiple universities, and studies that would examine these constructs over time.