“The relationship between nursing faculty stress and gratitude journaling”
Kathleen L. Whalen, MS RN – Regis University
The National League for Nursing (NLN) has reported a national shortage of nursing faculty. Some of the factors involved are limited qualified faculty, schools’ inability to offer competitive wages, and faculty leaving due to stress or retiring. A quality improvement project was developed for full-time faculty in a university nursing program in dealing with stress, which could aid in retention. A quasi-experiment with a pre-test and post-test design was used to measure participants’ stress using the Perceived Stress Scale–10 (PSS-10) before and after using a gratitude journal for six weeks. A paired samples t-test showed that the mean total scores of the PSS-10 from the pre-aggregate to the post-aggregate data were not significantly different. The data was noteworthy in that the full-time faculty did not complete the journal on average of once a week. A comparison of the mean total score of the pre-intervention and post-intervention PSS-10 total scores was not statistically significant but trending in the right direction. This also showed that most of the participants were in the medium stress level category. The data lend support to the evidence that faculty have heavy workloads and are not able to complete the journals. More research needs to be completed on gratitude journaling and finding ways to decrease nursing faculty stress
