Introduction

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, nurses, as guardians of public health, have been fighting in the frontline of caring for the infected patients. Nurses’ personal and psychological capacities, including resilience and professional commitment, which enable them to cope with difficult conditions and continue providing quality care, should be investigated thoroughly. The present study aimed to compare nurses in practice in COVID-19 units with nurses who are in practice in other hospital units in terms of resilience and professional commitment.

Material and methods

This was a descriptive-comparative study. In total, 6914 nurses (3609 nurses from COVID-19 units and 3305 nurses from general units) participated in the study. The study context was 13 hospitals, which were selected from nine cities in Fars and Khuzestan, as the southern provinces of Iran.

Results

The findings of the study showed that the professional commitment mean scores of nurses in COVID-19 units and nurses in general units were relatively high, as 45 and 55.5, respectively. Moreover, the resilience mean scores of nurses in COVID-19 units and those in general units were high, 82.5 and 93.5, respectively. Pearson’s correlation coefficient showed a significant direct relationship between professional commitment and resilience in the nurses in COVID-19 units (r = 0.74, p < 0.001) and nurses in general units (r = 0.57, p < 0.001).

Conclusions

In view of the existence of a significant positive relationship between resilience and professional commitment, some measures were designed to increase nurses’ resilience that can improve their professional commitment as well.