Can you teach resilience? What makes one person more resilient than the next?

in most cases, neglect lol

When I first qualified as a Nurse , I worked on a very busy acute medical ward. The ward had two senior Sisters. One used to put up motivational posters in the staff room and head tilt at the merest suggestion of occupational stress.
The other used to thank everyone for showing up for another shit show shift of epic proportions and would go nose to nose with any Doctor who dared to dump on her staff , not just nurses but everyone in the team including HCSW's and Domestics.
The fact that she recognised it was sometimes mostly shit went a long way to building resilience because you knew she understood and she had your back.

Be like the latter, and see the resilience of your staff improve. Decent tea/coffee/biscuits help too

Children learn Resilience when they are supported and encouraged to learn skills like reading/football/piano. During this process they also learn to accept that progress isn't always instant and may include setbacks.

'Resilience' has been redefined to mean

'put up with being repeatedly, treated badly and suck it up'.

I suspect the kind of resilience you're talking about in the OP is the kind where you're expected to get used to lack of resource and delivering poor standards of care.

That's a good point too.

Hmm. I take your point looking at society as a whole. And it is good for the individual to help others too- one of the 'five ways to wellbeing' is 'give'. Really important for people with depression to have that opportunity. But it's a case of the 'golden mean'. The responsibility of helping others isn't shared around society, its all piled onto a small subsection: (mainly) women in caring roles. Nurses in NICU have generally been attracted to the career for altruistic reasons- its not for the money! They're not the ones who need a sense of responsibility for others instilled in them.

Speaking to the first part of this, probably, but you'd be surprised how little sports psychology training was going on back in the early 2000's and still now! Which is why it's introduction was one of the marginal gains that took place that vaulted Team GB to so many medals, particularly in cycling, in 2012. Many sports people get to an elite level but never fulfil their full potential because they don't have the mental toughness to overcome adversity in a specific area.

Also, remember that elite can be anything from national to international to paid to play. Think Liverpool Vs Accrington Stanley both paid, but at different ends of an elite level spectrum.

Not every athlete has the bouncebackability to achieve to their highest level when faced with a problem, be it losing, injury, the weather etc.

Yes they might be elite level but they might not be gold medal standard due to, for example, their inability to get over a miss on goal.

Matthew Syed wrote a great book about this called Bounce - The myth of talent and the power of practice. He doesn't just cover sport in the book either, a fascinating read if you think that 10000 hours practice is 'all' you need to be elite.

The question was, can resilience be taught - the answer I gave was yes, I believe it can.

As to whether resilience training is a good use of the pot of money, I don't have an opinion on that (and Marcus Aurelius - Meditations 6.52 tells me that's OK!).

Quote your source.

I believe a lot of it is actually related to moral values. The big issue with our society is that we're more and more about our individual "rights" rather than framing lifeline teams of responsibilities.

The more you jnstill in people/ children that their primary responsibility is to others not themselves, the more they understand that whatever their feelings they have a duty to get up and do the right thing. They have to visualise first the impact of their entourage of giving in, before considering any negative impacts to self of going forwards.

Would that involve techniques for handling stress, emotions around not being able to save patients etc? Sounds a good idea to me

Speak to your Occupational Health department. Yes resilience can be taught. There are strategies for this and this can be adaptable dependent on the individual so it can be taught as part of cognitive behaviour therapy or it can be through coaching

As an occupational health practitioner, it's ow concerning that this question is being asked here and not directed to the professionals in your organisation who can address it

Is this like a chicken or egg situation though?

To be an elite athlete, a personality strength would be resilience. So any extra teaching on this is really just building on the foundations that these athletes already have. An athlete that isn’t resilient is unlikely to be successful and therefore wouldn’t reach elite levels and wouldn’t have undergone this training so wouldn’t have been taught resilience.

Either way, whether you believe resilience can be taught or not, I think we could probably all agree that nothing meaningful for these workers is going to come from a half day seminar on how to be more resilient. All of the examples of resilience being taught previous posters have provided have been a sustained effort over a length of time and the participants have bought in and actively want the outcome - enforcing compulsory attendance at a one off session is not an effective method in teaching resilience.

If resilience can be taught it won’t be taught in that setting at that budget.

Something that is similar to resilience or helps build resilience is stress management. That’s a hackneyed term now but would be more teachable in the situation you described. You could outline what resilience entails and focus on stress management as a corner stone of resilience.

I hope whatever you decide goes well and your team get some ongoing value from it

Prisons are full of ex-military. Almost no nurses though.

Maybe the nurses should teach the soldiers.

I don't think it can be taught. Not truly. Maybe strategies to help, but I do believe some people just have it or it's developed in a different way. My two teens, both are highly highly resilient individuals, for different reasons. I always put that down to being much more like their Dad than me, but actually I think we are both pretty resilient people but in very different ways and this has passed on. My DH is public service and deals with things I could never imagine.

My younger DC has literally been resilient from almost day one it felt. Always had this completely chilled, self assured, water off a ducks back attitude that means they will just keep on swimming. They are just doing GSCEs and are moving in to healthcare (trauma nursing, midwifery or paramedic) and I'm not surprised!
My elder DC I would have said was much more sensitive and I didn't think they were naturally resilient in the same way. However, sadly they recently experienced a big trauma that forced them to sink or swim and they dealt it with it unbelievably and came out of it a different, highly resilient person. I wish they'd never had to experience it but they've managed to turn a negative in to a positive and find that inner strength that will set them up for life.

You can teach the 'theory' skills of resilience, but as with most things, life experience - whether that be nature or nurture - is totally different.

🙄 I didn't say you were only talking about men in the military. They're still gendered workforces, as is nursing. Doesn't mean they're made up of all men or all women.

You were saying someone from the military should be sent in to teach NICU nurses how to deal with stressful situations. Can you really not see how patronising that is?

The idea that I am taking about MEN in the military is sexist and a stereotype.

Also, why are you saying that a Nurse in NICU won't know what stressful situations are?

That's just rude.

The idea that someone in the military will know what stressful situations are, and a nurse in NICU won't, is misogyny, pure and simple.

So you think there are no women in the military who might know what stressful situations are, and no male nurses in ICU? That's pretty misogynist, isn't it? Not to mention outdated and ill-informed.

Buy a big cake. Offer a slice to everyone and slice it up in the middle of the office. Then eat eve egg single slice yourself. Finish by shouting “get over it” through a small megaphone 📣 and walk out. Await the emails and invite everyone who shows poor resilience in for a mandatory PPT in your office. Pat yourself on the back and use the money for more cake for the office to celebrate.

The idea that someone in the military will know what stressful situations are, and a nurse in NICU won't, is misogyny, pure and simple.

People have mentioned the lack of debrief and recovery time as absolutely killer in these stressful caring professions. No R and R, and the sense of moral responsibility is unimaginable.

The idea that they need to incrementally build up their stress (from what base level are you thinking, zero??) is also .... poorly directed.

Agree.

There's research into burnout and workplace resilience in emotionally challenging roles. Basically it's making sure you have whole supportive systems, not expecting individual resilience way above and beyond reasonable expectation. We are beginning to understand that resilience is a systemic property.

I think in this case, your staff have resilience in spades, or you would have lost them already. There's a large body of research into unintended consequences of interventions. Tokenistic resilience training risks being patronising and insulting to staff: counterproductive.

This is interesting.

For me it's a bit like common sense and having 'foresight' and I think it's naturally there or not - only so much can be taught.

Yes, you can teach resilience - it's been one of the foundations of sports psychology for years but it's known as mental toughness, of which resilience is one part.

Interesting article here: Mental toughnes for young athletes

Luckily Team GB didn't think it couldn't be trained back in the early 2000's otherwise London 2012 would've been a bit shite!

I think resilience comes with an optimistic personality. I don’t think these qualities can be taught.

The problem with being resilient is that you keep going until you can’t, faced with challenge after challenge resilient people still burnout, it might take a little longer but as an outside observer you won’t see it until it happens.

Burnout is very different to lacking resilience.

Ask the staff what they would value most. Go with majority vote.

If they need guidance,offer some suggestions. I'd include as one possible option ' a day off' and also
' a group leisure activity of your choosing '.