Praying the Psalms as a Nursing Resilience Intervention

Abstract

Nurses face a range of unhealthy organizational, physical, psychological, and spiritual issues that can lead to burnout, turnover, and leaving the profession. Nurses who use prayer for support may find their faith to be another source of tension when stressors endlessly continue without change despite prayer. Walter Brueggemann's states of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation in his classic work on praying the Old Testament book of Psalms offer a means for managing spiritual tension. Praying using the psalms can become a self-care tool for building resilience.