Abstract:

This study aims to compare professional quality of life and level of learned resourcefulness of the nurses working in psychiatry and other departments and investigates whether there was a significant correlation between their professional quality of life and learned resourcefulness. 180 nurses, working in a psychiatric hospital and public general hospital were determined as sample of this descriptive study. For data collection, The “Rossenbaum Learned Resourcefulness Scale (RLRS)”, “Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL R-IV) and "Information Form" are applied. A comparison between RLRS level, and the scores of ProQOL R-IV of the nurses demonstrated that there is a significant difference (p<0,01) between the two groups. It appears that RLRS level and job satisfaction subscale level were higher, whereas burnout and compassion fatigue subscale levels was lower in psychiatric nurses.  Furthermore a negative correlation is obtained between nurses' RLRS  and compassion fatigue (r=,-45, p<0,01) and burnout subscale scores (r=,41, p<0,01) and positive correlation between  nurses' RLRS  and job satisfaction subscale (r= ,26, p<0,01).  The study argues that the experience in psychiatric knowledge and experience contributes to the nurses gaining individual coping skills and transference of those skills to raise their professional quality of life.

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