Nurses are the largest workforce in healthcare, and play a critical role in maintaining the quality, safety and stability of the healthcare system. Nurses deliver safe, complex, high-quality care despite the growing, evolving demands of the healthcare system. Workplace stressors are inherent in the nursing practice. However, nurses experience some of the highest levels of occupational stress and may come to view continuous and prolonged exposure to workplace stressors as simply an acceptable and inevitable norm for the profession.^1-3 Despite continued advancements in healthcare programs, practices, technologies and staffing models, nursing workload stressors, demands and resources have not improved and remain stagnant.^4-6 Advances in healthcare technologies and improvements in clinical practice have been counterbalanced by increased patient volume, higher patient acuity, greater unit and organizational demands, and an expansion of nursing tasks, duties and responsibilities.^4-6 As the demand for nurses and nursing care continues to grow, nurses are now at an even greater risk of experiencing burnout and turnover. Currently, burnout amongst the nursing workforce ranges between 30% and 50%, and nurse turnover modestly increased to 17.6% nationwide over the past year.^7-8 The costs associated with nurse turnover have a significant financial impact, costing organizations between $4.2 and $6.2 million a year in losses.⁹ In addition, nurse turnover has a negative impact on patient care quality, increasing adverse patient safety events and medical errors.¹⁰ This highlights the importance of addressing nurse well-being as a system-level priority. Healthcare systems have worked diligently to address individual, unit and system-level stressors and identify evidence-based strategies that enhance and strengthen nurses’ ability to respond to workplace stressors. One such strategy is using nurse resilience as a focal point for strengthening professional well-being. Nurse resilience may seem abstract and difficult to define. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to internal and external demands.”¹¹ Other definitions of resilience include an individual’s ability to adapt to and handle demanding and stressful situations or environments through behaviors that support and facilitate flexibility and adaptation.¹² Another defines resilience as the ability to successfully cope with adverse situations and circumstances.¹³ Press Ganey¹⁴ defines resilience in two domains: activation (nurses find their work meaningful and purposeful) and deactivation (nurses are able to disconnect from work). Another, more specific definition of nurse resilience is described in a concept analysis by Cooper et al.¹⁵, in which the study team identified six key attributes of nurse resilience: social support, self-efficacy, work-life balance/self-care, humor, optimism and realism. While there is no agreed-upon definition, the literature strongly supports building and enhancing nurse resilience to counter negative outcomes stemming from workplace stress. Resilience may look and feel different for individual nurses and can be influenced by practice environments, years of experience, specialty and even country of origin.^16-17 Clinical frontline nurses may see resilience in daily practice — navigating demanding shifts, caring for highly complex and acute patients, prioritizing care and managing competing priorities and interruptions, while still managing to carve out time to eat and go to the bathroom. Nurse leaders may see resilience as the ability to successfully navigate the latest staffing challenge, budget crisis or pandemic. Resilience for a new graduate nurse looks quite different from that of a more experienced, tenured nurse.^1,18 Similarly, resilience for an ICU nurse may differ from that of an oncology nurse or a perioperative nurse.⁶ Some believe that resilience is an innate personality characteristic or trait that only certain individuals can access or possess. Resilience, however, is not a fixed personality trait but a dynamic process that can be developed over time.^19-20 Resilience exists on a continuum and can ebb and flow depending on the experience or circumstance. Most importantly, resilience is something that you can work on and build upon to promote personal and professional well-being. Interventions to build resilience exist at the individual, unit and system levels. Individual interventions such as journaling, mindfulness-based stress reduction, deep breathing and self-care practices help build resilience at the personal level.^16-17,20-21 Unit and team-based interventions may include peer support programs, resilience retreats, toolkits, mentorship, huddles, debriefs and monthly forums.^16-17,20-21 Meanwhile, system-level interventions may include meaningful recognition programs, nursing workload redesigns, policies and procedures, leadership visibility and role modeling, educational support and resources, employee assistance programs, recharge rooms and benefits supporting access to psychological support services.^16-17,20-21 More than a buzzword, resilience encompasses more than simply getting through difficult situations or experiences. Resilience is a multi-layered, multi-faceted, dynamic process. No single intervention is sufficient. Strengthening resilience requires coordinated strategies across individual, unit and system levels, listening to nurses' voices and empowering nurses with resources and support that enhance their resilience. Nursing resilience begins internally and is nurtured through supportive infrastructures and policies that are connected and aligned across the team, organization and healthcare system. Without this support, nurse resilience weakens. Resilience and nurses’ ability to cultivate it are critical to building a healthy workforce and sustaining high-quality patient care.