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

As someone with shit resilience this thread makes me feel better actually as the advice is constant about what you should do about it or how you’re a failure as a person or not made quite right. To read it can’t be taught is a relief actually. Takes the pressure off.

Yes. I use a psychometric tool related to resilience. I use it with the nhs. You can increase your protective factors and therefore improve your ability to manage stress.

However, too much workload, moral injury etc is still a thing and you can't just say to someone- 'be more resilient.

I think you can teach it, insofar as you can explain how it works, and the attitudes and principles of resilient people. That doesn't mean you can make people resilient from the teachings overnight, but if they want to be and are prepared to change and work at it, that is a start.

Resilient people understand failure and disappointment are a normal part of a normal life, they don't feel targetted personally by them. They use failure as opportunity to learn, not to mope. They recover from disappointment through good self-care and having effective support mechanisms in place. They tend to look at problems as puzzles to solve, not obstacles.

Resilient people recognise the world does not always go their way, others do not always share their point of view and they know how to navigate this diplomatically and with good humour, without losing sight of their own beliefs. They can distinguish between their wants (not always met) and their needs (worth fighting for.)

Introducing these mindsets and giving people the chance to apply them where they usually wouldn't is training worth having imo.

Repeated exposure to adversity without recover time can cause burn-out.

Most people in the NHS frontline are confronted with difficult situations regularly. I doubt it’s the lack of challenge that’s the problem - more likely too much.

I’d be very resistant to seeing resilience training as a solution to problems within the NHS it would be like saying the systems in place are not the problem is staff not being resilient “ enough” that it causing problems.
Unreasonable work loads, poor staffing levels, breaks not being protected, experiencing hostility from patients, bullying from senior staff, can all impact on someone’s resilience, even if they normally have a high level of resilience.
These and other issues need tackled not sending a few individuals on resilience training!

I think you can teach people to understand what “resilience” means in a medical context. Burn-out is common in a lot of jobs, where there is high stress and high impact if something goes wrong.

Resilience is both organisational and individual. The NHS provides resilience through provision of appropriate amount of properly trained staff and facilities, and by ensuring there is procedure for all eventualities as well as disaster-recovery planning. In addition well defined and controlled procedures enable staff to work out what needs to be done and detect early if something is going wrong.

Having an open “no-blame” culture and strong staff welfare is part of this- if staff member A can’t discuss a problem, it may impact their work, or the work of staff member b,c, and d and ultimately impact patient care.

In terms of individual resilience, you can train people to understand symptoms of work-related stress and what causes it - dealing with emotionally challenging situations; difficult “customers”; impact of shift work on health; working excessive overtime; admin or IT problems undermining effective processes; conflict within teams/with management, etc.

So I would say:

what source of stress is most common or most having most impact in the department?

then target resource to fix that first.

I don't know. I mean maybe. Or perhaps some adversity improves resilience. It's easy to appear resilient when things are easy - not a dig at you by the way. And when is it resilience and when is it avoidance? I'm genuinely asking. I don't know.

Honestly I've noticed a sharp decline in 'resilience' in real life lately amongst friends and in particular my teens and their friends. I often wonder why that is? Even on Mumsnet I've noticed posts from people wanting their partner to walk them to the bus 5 min away in bad weather, spend 40 minutes on public transport to the airport to meet them to 'help' them with their bag, to be desperately upset that a partner is away on work trip meaning minding their own child on their own for a few days. I don't think these kind of posts were so prevalent a few years ago .
My kids ask for help on things I definitely would have managed my self at their age. Have we bred a nation of snowflakes some how? How do we teach our kids to be resilient?

One naturally resilient person is Tova Friedman who survived Auschwitz - She said her mother taught her - she endured horrendous things but refused to quit as a young child , but she must also have inherited a resilient basic personality.

I’ve listened to her story several times, and she’s definitely resilient, but she also put her and her mother’s survival down to blind luck.

I don't think resilience can be taught and telling staff they need to be more resilient is pointless.
But I do think people can cope better with adverse things if they have more capacity.
So in healthcare that looks like fair rostering, good skill mix on shift, opportunities to advance/ learn. Quality supervision like happens in social care. Proper debriefs after adverse events. Psychological safety at work.
Zero tolerance of bullying. Quality management and leadership.
All of the above allows the individual to have more capacity to do a very challenging job

I thought you didn't think resilience could be taught so I suggested a course on mental health and self care.

I agree with this. If you expect your DC to stick at things for a reasonable amount of time, especially team activities where bailing out will impact on others, DC in my experience cope with things better. They keep going and get a sense of achievement. If they’re nervous about so thing but have to do it and all works out well, that’s a big learning experience which DC who are allowed to bail out don’t get.

Thinking back on DS2 sports day, I should have made an exception in that case as his lack of sporting ability was not going to improve by taking part and there weren’t team events. The whole thing was terrible and ended in him being very upset for three years in a row. I wish I hadn’t done that. But overall I’m glad I insisted that both of mine stuck at things they’d volunteered to, as both of them are able to stick at things now.

Some people are blessed with an upbringing that makes them resilient. Others have to learn as adults.
It absolutely can be improved. Otherwise I’d still be a useless gibbering wreck.

This isn’t a bad summary. I’m not recommending NLP, just saying the presuppositions are useful for reframing situations and finding different approaches to overwhelming situations.

sarahmerron.com/the-14-presuppositions-of-nlp-practice/

It’s a combination of things.

An understanding of self care- that those things directly contribute to your resilience, and ways to engineer them into your life.

Relaxation protocols whether that’s yoga, meditation, tai chi… they won’t stop you being stressed about the patient in cubicle 4, but they will lower your stress response across the board so that you have more capacity for unavoidable shit.

Reframing skills.
NLP has some good concepts that really help reframe the situation into something you can manage. They are catchily phrased but mean things like ‘you can’t control other people. You can control yourself’ so you spend energy on things that are in your control rather than stressing about things you can’t change.
There are lots more of these that I find really helpful, if you google ‘principles of NLP’.

I think resilience is formative, and happens in our young childhood. You learn to shake yourself off and try again. You are given the opportunity to try risky things safely and then apply those learnings to other areas of life. You are raised to have faith in your own abilities and that your voice and opinions matter. Those things are cumulative and set you up to view future difficulties in a more positive light than those that were brought up in a less resilient way.

In terms of improving resilience in the work place, less overwork, breaks and lunches and contracted work hours valued. Allowing for more downtime, relaxation and processing the day. To leave in a better state for the next shift.

Where are the pinch points my work found waiting for kettles to boil or access to the microwave was eating into people's lunch breaks so coffee machine / hot water tap and another microwave meant that people were able to relax more at lunch. We only had 2 female toilets so there was always a queue and you'd often not get to go before the next lesson so the built some more toilets.

I misunderstood, I thought you wanted to run a half day course not provide individual care for 250 staff.

Eminently sensible, Lanzarote!

A Half day course??!

What good would that do!

Utter waste of money.

Glad you are sensible in spending this money!

Until I had 3 solid years of terrible troubles, you would have thought I was indomitably résiliant. Now: not so much. Things that have never troubled me before push me over the edge.

I think resilience is an outcome of many other things.

if you have money, how about spending it on some sort of supervision programme for tour staff - a sort of professional counselling-cum-support? I think that could be genuinely supportive, and well supported people do have more capacity - and therefore resilience. Focus further back down the chain.

It might be an idea to spend the money on self care and mental health. For example, how to spot the signs of burnout, the importance of taking breaks, good sleep hygiene, having good support networks, dealing with trauma, available help etc

I agree- Resiliency can’t be taught to adults ( or even children- I think of it an an innate character some people have in extreme circumstances to survive and to encourage others ( like a shipwreck or on a War situation.

It was surprising to read how no NHS Nursing staff had coffee or tea provided- I’d spend the money on that.

And as you say, some decent biscuits.

Or specific counselling of people are upset by what they see - because working in ICU or a burns unit must be very stressful for staff.