Resilience In Health Care

Resilience is an individual’s ability to properly recover from stress or adversity. It is the process of adapting well in the face of trauma, tragedy or threats coming from many sources including family and relationship problems, health issues and workplace or financial stressors. This essay shows the concept of resilience from the perspective of the consumer and health care professional. Working in healthcare is stressful, and it takes a toll a persons physical, emotional and mental levels. To effectively care for others, you must be able to care for yourself, showing resilience.

In the health care environment, the concept of resilience is shown through the ability of a health care worker to deal with the many stressors that their profession

brings in terms of caring for patients on a daily basis. An ill patient requires an increased observance for any signs that something may go wrong, but these needs compete with requirements for more and more documentation. A team of resilient health care professionals, not only provide better services but they also know how to support each other through times of challenge and crisis. The concept of resilience “reduces the opportunity for risk and enhances the occasions for prevention and helping the health care environment keep hope and faithfulness alive” (Wolff, 2014). For a health care professional, each day should bring a sense of satisfaction and joy whether that comes from delivering a baby, helping a patient walk for the first time or just making a patient feel as comfortable as possible in the environment they are in. By being able to care for others and making their day whilst also looking after you shows the concept of being resilient.

For many individuals, to the ability to show the concept of resiliency can be tough, they feel as though trying to adapt to the new found stresses of life could be a challenge and would rather walk away from the strong situation then face it.

People who choose not to show resilience share in the risk factors that contribute to resilience. Low income poses as a risk factor towards resiliency, for many having a low income can prevent them from moving forward in their life and can avert them and their families from having the ability to overcome life stresses that may come in their way. For example, a single mother with a low income may struggle to demonstrate resilience to her children, as it may be tough for her to pay the rent of her small apartment and pay for their shopping with her little income. In the health care setting, health care professionals may have problems contributing to holding them back from showing resilience such as, the health care professional may have to care for a patient that is suffering from a similar illness to a person close to the health care professional. This may cause for the health care professional to ‘hide-away’ and not want to face their problems. A health care professional may also be having a tough time in their home-life and it makes it difficult for them to adapt to the stress and adversity of their

work-life.

Showing resilience for many is a risk factor, but with those risks comes protective factors contributing to showing resilience. Protective factors are defined as “characteristics that reduce the negative impact of a risk on a problematic outcome” (O'Connell, Boat, & Warner, 2009). For any individual they want to be able to overcome the natural stressors of life and be able to adapt to them. An example of a protective factor contributing to resilience in the health care environment may be that the health care professional has supportive relationships with their families that enable them to show resilience in their profession but also allow them to overcome the stresses and hardship that may result from having to care for patients. Even with many risk and protective factors that contribute to resilience, it is very important for health care professionals and other consumers to show resilience in their day-to-day lifestyle.

In the health care environment, it is extremely important for health care professionals to show resilience. In their work environment, being professionally resilient can prevent or reduce the “ demanding and challenging effects the environment might have on mental health and wellbeing” (KidsMatter, 2014). By being able to decrease this, health care professionals are able to thrive on high demand situations and ongoing pressure. Health care professionals are also able to recover from complications that may arise from work-life balance with supportive relationships, both with work colleagues and family members. Any person has a higher chance of being able to show resilience if they are doing the type of work that they enjoy and their have a balanced work-life routine. If you enjoy your profession, you are less likely to be affected by the parts in your profession that you don’t enjoy. Resilience is increasingly valuable as the “healthcare environment is always changing and in inexact ways” increasing the importance for all health care professionals to build and show the concept resilience (Pipe, et al., 2011).

Resilience involves certain behaviours, beliefs and actions that can be learnt or developed in anyone, it is not a characteristic that you can either have or not have.

Resilience is a personal journey, one approach to build resilience may work for one person but it may not work for another, as people do not react the same way to different life events. All people have resilience but being able to build resilience is debatably at odds with the concept of resilience since resilience is a characteristic of oneself, although there are ways to enhance your resilience. There are certain lifestyle factors and support networks that help develop ones resilience such as, doing things that you, as the consumer, enjoy and “being physically active helps to improve resilience and decrease ones stress” (Lowinger, 2015). For any consumer it is important to show and strengthen their resilient characteristic, it helps to overcome stress and difficult

situations.

In the health care environment, health care professionals show resilience every day in their profession. Without resilience their profession wouldn’t be what it is today as they must show they are able to care for others whilst also caring for themselves, which can be hard on one physical, emotional and mental levels, but also the added stresses of their daily life. This essay has discussed that all health care professionals and health care consumers have the ability to show that they can properly adapt to the stresses and adversity of life, therefore showcasing the concept of resilience.