Psychosocial Factors Associated with Resilience and Perceived Readiness Among Navy Corpsmen

Abstract

Abstract : Navy corpsmen play an essential role in providing health care to both the Navy and the Marine Corps, yet little is known about the factors associated with resilience and readiness in this population. The objective of this study was to identify demographic and psychosocial predictors of dispositional resilience and perceived readiness in corpsmen. The sample consisted of 1,602 male Navy corpsmen attending Field Medical Training Battalion West, Camp Pendleton, California. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to determine the associations of demographic and psychosocial predictors with both dispositional resilience and perceived readiness. In the final model, four psychosocial factors were significant predictors of both resilience and readiness: occupational self-efficacy, task-specific self-efficacy, motivation to be a corpsman, and lower anger. Two additional factors were significant predictors of resilience but not of readiness: higher organizational commitment and lower levels of sleep problems. These results are consistent with past research that has linked self-efficacy to a broad range of positive outcomes. Overall, the results demonstrate the importance of self-efficacy for corpsmens' resilience and readiness, and suggest that training and interventions aimed at increasing corpsmens self-efficacy have the potential to improve resilience and readiness in this population.