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Data Collection

To collect my data, my sample population will be healthcare professionals from my hospital. I will not limit my sample to just nurses but other professionals including case management, pharmacy, and lab. This will be a random sample from the chosen population. 

Key Points

In the scholarly article, Optimism and Its Impact on Mental and Physical Well-Being, Conversano et al.(2010) made a point about needing to differentiate between being optimistic and having a “lack of information and poor critical insight.”(para. 8). This makes me think of the saying ignorance is bliss. An example of this would be a child who has never been to a theme park and they are taken on a very hot day in Texas. The child might believe that this will be an amazing day and that nothing can go wrong. The child is more than likely uninformed about the very long wait times for each ride and the relentless heat. Is the child optimistic about the day or do they possess unrealistic optimism?

In the non-scholarly article, Girlfriends are Key to Women’s Optimism, I liked how the author addressed that there could be generational attributes to optimism. Different generations have different views of the world, generally. I do believe that we are a product of our environment and the experiences we have encountered. 

Additional Resource

The additional resource I found is an article called Your Brain on Optimism. It is also non-scholarly and examines optimism in the nursing profession. This article contains advice from nurses on how to improve optimism. The author stated that “Just like diseases are contagious, so is negativity.”(Your brain on optimism, 2019)

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The methodology to be used for the upcoming research project would be a survey presented to two specific demographics; University students (mostly freshmen) and Registered nurses who work in an acute care hospital. Age of the participants will be between 18-56 years old. Survey questions ranges from the level of ease to stay positive in challenging circumstances to personal beliefs and experiences that influences their positive outlook.

The participants from the university were recruited with the assistance of my daughter who is in her first year of college at the University of California Davis. I wanted to assess their ability to adapt to a new environment and their coping attitude towards certain challenges such as being away from home and meeting new acquaintances. Per Conversano et al. (2010), students who exhibits low levels of dispositional optimism are more vulnerable to have difficulty navigating the academia and tends to have a negative perception towards their institution. Dispositional optimism as defined by Scheier et al. (2018), “is the generalized, relatively stable tendency to expect good outcomes across important life domains” (p. 1082). 

The Registered nurse participants were selected from the hospital where I am employed. Due to the ever-changing environment in an acute care hospital such as, COVID, hostile patients, uncontrolled behaviors exhibited by patients in mental distress, and death, nurses are constantly exposed to a higher level of stress which can affect their perception in life. According to Conversano et al. (2010), optimism and work  performance are intertwined which also reflects effective coping strategies. Per Lee (2022), replacing frustration with optimism can change the trajectory of a nurse’s perception of her work environment.  Optimism at work can be achieved by practicing gratitude such as thanking a co-worker or  implement a gratitude board for others to participate.