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

[Lanzarotelady]

Genuinely interested in this, what makes one person more resilient than the next?
Two people go through the same, ie nurses working in covid ICU, what makes one person cope better than the other?
Can resilience be taught?
I am asking as we have a pot of money to use at work ( NHS ICU ) and people have asked for resilience training, but I can't help but think, you can't be taught it?

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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’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!

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 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.

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.

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 think assertiveness training and CBT can both be very supportive of resilience.

The CBT would normally lead into other modalities for self-care/self-management; those are easily accessed once you've identified your needs (which the CBT helps to do).

Assertiveness is becoming a lost skill. I'm heavily in favour of proper training for it.

Some of the most resilient people I know are fantastic at compartmentalising. I find this hard and am so impressed by friends who can be going through hell but will meet up for a walk or run, or go to an evening class and just enjoy it without offloading because that's how they refuel - they ditch the massive problem at home or work temporarily and just enjoy the moment.

Ok, I misunderstood, you're talking about in a workplace context.

I am going to bed for a few hours, was on last night, I will come back, not ignoring you all

I definitely think you can learn resilience - at any age. Part of it will be role playing scenarios, and learning about different outcomes. Knowing what to expect in a stressful situation can help you deal with it.

My suggestion would be to reach out to a consultant who specialises in this kind of training, and ask them how they could successfully coach your team/colleagues for their work environment. These kinds of consultants tend to have had a lot of work experience already in stressful conditions, and know what's needed and what works.

The fact that colleagues are asking for it shows they already believe it could help.

I agree but sometimes wonder if it's resilience or repression. In a previous job I would have been considered very resilient. I don't think I could do it now. I know people experienced huge trauma and not discussed it. I don't know if that's helpful. I'm being annoying, as I don't know.

I don't know if you have shit resilience. Why would you think that? I've got excellent resilience but, honestly, I found that out the hard way. I don't think resilience is bottling things up, I think it's acknowledging you need support, you need a break, that things are hard.

In the workplace I have seen resilience being improved through skilled staff debriefing. In a workspace like ICU money could be spent on backfilling and clinical psychology support to do individual and peer group debriefing after specific difficult events

Colleagues aren't asking for it. There is a pot of money to be used and this has been suggested

Sorry if it's already been mentioned.

Mindful Based Stress Reduction course.

Mindfulness and meditation apparently proven to change your brain and improve your ability to cope with stress

I think it does help if people are properly trained to do their jobs. So, not resilience training but how to deal with difficult situations, what to do in an emergency etc. So when one happens the training kicks in.

Agree with others who say resilience can’t really be taught, it’s a combination of many different factors.

The closest you could perhaps get to teaching it is to pay for your employees to have therapy sessions. Recognising failings / difficulties in life and learning strategies to cope with them via therapy would perhaps help strengthen how someone copes in life, appearing to make them
more resilient

I think it had to be introduced by your parents in childhood, and compounded upon over the years. Overcoming obstacles, not giving up when things are hard, sticking at sports, playing in teams even when you lose/don’t get chosen, understanding that others will get more attention than you some of the time. Understanding that it’s okay to fail, that it’s part of learning.

If your parents removed obstacles in your way and made your life as easy as possible, courses in adulthood aren’t going to change a lack of resilience.

Some people’s personalities just don’t fit it either.

All the separate life events that one can go through in life will build one’s resilience. I believe resilience has to be built. So it would be depending on the nurses life events leading up to this moment which would determine how each of the nurses would react to the situation.