Statement of problem. Women with limited resources lack basic health coverage. More women than men are poor. The majority of working women remain in low wage, insecure jobs with little prestige and stability, and no benefits. Low wage earners are at the greatest risk for being uninsured. Being the working poor and without medical insurance is a barrier to health care. The purpose of this descriptive, correlational study was to describe the interrelationships between learned resourcefulness (LR), health status, and well-being (WB) in working women who are poor and uninsured.

Procedure. A convenience sample of 132 working women who were at least 100% below poverty level, uninsured, and between the ages of 25 and 64 were participants in a study at a free clinic between the weeks of July 27 and August 17, 2009. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, a survey measuring health status with health indicators from the WV Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, the Index of Well-Being measuring WB, and the Self-Control Schedule measuring LR.

Results. The sample mean age was 45.11 years with a range between 25 and 65 years. Subjects in this study scored lower on health status indicators than the comparison population from the State of West Virginia. The sample mean of LR of 19.5 compared to the median of 22 indicated the data were skewed to the left. There was a statistically significant (p=.001) positive relationship between learned resourcefulness and well-being. As WB increased LR increased. Learned resourcefulness, education, and the number of persons living in the home together predicted 28% of the variance in WB ( R²=.276, p=.017).

Conclusions. Implications for nursing research were identified and include the need for replication of the study in another sample in a different region to validate current findings. A qualitative study addressing questions on individual tendencies with directed content analysis should be attempted. Concerning practice, the findings encourage advanced practice nurses to consider caring for groups of patients and to teach skills promoting resourcefulness. The social history commonly gathered should change to inquire about aspects of WB that may be impinging LR.