Resilience, Trauma, and Cultural Norms Regarding Disclosure of Mental Health Problems among Foreign-Born and US-Born Filipino American Women.

Resilience refers to a set of personal qualities and abilities that allow an individual to confront challenges, risks, or traumatic experiences in an integrated manner and to thrive in the face of significant adversities. This cross-sectional study explores resilience, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and family norms with disclosure of mental health problems (FNAD) in a sample of 182 Filipino American women (FAW). Participants completed survey measures of resilience, PTSD, and FNAD and open-ended questions about beliefs and reasons for (not) disclosing mental health problems outside the family. Previous research found that the rates of psychological trauma and depression among FAW are higher than those in other Asian ethnic groups, which makes it necessary to investigate the protective characteristic of resilience among FAW. According to our results, foreign-born FAW had a significantly lower PTSD and greater resilience as compared to their US-born counterparts. A significant negative relationship between PTSD and resilience was observed only among foreign-born FAW. We also found a conditional moderating effect of FNAD on the negative relationship between resilience and PTSD. The results of our qualitative analysis of the participants' responses to the open-ended questions of the survey showed that FAW's family norms of nondisclosure are related to the cultural value of "saving face," a salient cultural construct among Asian family members. Results suggest that protective properties of resilience against PTSD are influenced by cultural factors, such as FNAD. Taken together, our findings underscore the importance of considering the impact of collectivistic cultural values (e.g., FNAD) in future research on resilience among Asian Americans.

Resilience and psychological trauma among Filipino American women.

AIMS: To explore the types of traumatic exposure, prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and level of resilience in a community sample of Filipino American women (FAW), as well as to investigate the relationships between their PTSD symptoms, history of traumatic exposure, and resilience. METHOD: A cross-sectional study with a total of 188 adult FAW. RESULTS: We observed high levels of resilience and low levels of PTSD symptom severity. The most common form of traumatic exposure was non-interpersonal trauma occurring after the age of 18 years old. We also found a significant correlation between history of traumatic exposure and PTSD and between resilience and PTSD. Resilience was found to have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between traumatic exposure and PTSD. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide preliminary evidence on the buffering and protective properties of FAW's resilience to PTSD despite traumatic exposure.

A teaching intervention to improve the self-efficacy of internationally educated nurses.

Increasingly, the U.S. health care system relies on internationally educated nurses to meet the staffing shortage. Many of these nurses come to the United States from Asian countries, especially the Philippines, India, Korea, and increasingly China. Because of conflicting professional and socioeconomic expectations, a growing body of literature has documented a range of challenges experienced by internationally educated nurses during their transition to the U.S. health care environment and American society. This article describes an increase in perceived self-efficacy for a group of internationally educated nurses (N = 18) who participated in an adverse cardiac event with the use of computer-assisted simulation training. The findings indicate that internationally educated nurses may increase their self-efficacy in caring for patients in U.S. health care facilities if they receive some pre-employment simulation training to help them transition to the U.S. health care work force.

Systematic and deliberate orientation and instruction for dedicated education unit staff.

On the basis of increasing complexity of the health care environment and recommended changes in how nurses are educated to meet these challenges, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, School of Nursing established an academic-practice partnership with Summerlin Hospital Medical Center to develop a dedicated education unit (DEU). When the DEU model was implemented, variables that were not discussed in the literature needed to be addressed. One such challenge was how to impart pedagogy related to clinical teaching to the DEU nursing staff who would be acting as clinical dedicated unit instructors (CDIs). Of chief concern was the evaluation and monitoring of the quality of CDI-student interactions to ensure optimal student learning outcomes. This article addresses the development of a deliberate, systematic approach to the orientation and continued education of CDIs in the DEU. This information will assist other nursing programs as they begin to implement DEUs.