Measuring resilience in palliative care workers using the situational judgement test methodology.

OBJECTIVES: Relatively little research has been directed toward the assessment of resilience in the health care context. Given the stressors associated with the provision of health care, the present study describes the development and evaluation of a situational judgement test (SJT) designed to assess resilience in palliative care health care workers.

METHODS: An SJT was developed to measure behaviours associated with resilience in a palliative care context. Next, SJT reliability and validity analyses were assessed in a sample of acute ward, hospice and community palliative care workers (n = 284).

RESULTS: Findings showed the SJT to have a negative association with self-reported sickness absence and a positive association with well-being and employee attitudes (in terms of turnover intention, organisational commitment and job satisfaction). A series of two-wave longitudinal (hierarchical) regressions showed the SJT was predictive of well-being and employee attitudes at two time-points (4 weeks apart) over and above self-report measures of resilience, education and experience, and the Big Five personality dimensions of Emotional Stability and Openness. Reliability analyses showed the SJT to have acceptable test-retest scores (ρ = 0.71) and high internal consistency (α = 0.91).

CONCLUSIONS: The study findings suggest that the SJT is a valid assessment of resilience in at-risk workers and can be used in either summative or formative assessment under the right set of conditions. More research is needed to test the hypothesis that the SJT might be used as a formative tool to develop workplace resilience.