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Session 1 of 5
Resiliency Framework: Introducing Resiliency In Healthcare
Getting Started
Today we will introduce what resiliency is and why building resiliency is so important. Parts of this will hopefully seem like a review and is meant to re-focus your attention to your own self-growth.
This course is meant as a professional and personal jumpstart to support your work in healthcare. I intentionally include options to take a deeper dive into a specific content area to better explore an area you want to learn more about or increase skills on.
After reviewing this online portion, including the videos presenting new information, turn to your accompanying workbook to review and plan how resilience can support and be practiced with your work. I hope that this course will help you not only support your patients but also help you support yourself.
Ability to be Present
A key component to improving your daily resiliency is increasing your ability to be present. When beginning each day’s lesson, start with 1 minute to look around the space you're in and settle into what you're doing. Visually notice what's around you. This contributes to a sense of safety which is at the core of being resilient. Notice details. And notice your breath.
- Resiliency requires you to be present.
- Utilize this experiential exercise to contribute to present moment awareness.
a. Think about some times during the day that you are the most present and focused?
b. What makes those moments possible?
In your workbook, you'll list out ways to practice being more present.
PRACTICE REITERATES RESILIENCY.
Introduction to Resiliency
In today's lecture, we're diving into a brief overview of what resiliency is, the components of resiliency, and how to begin to connect each of these to grow your resilience.
Below are the 6 Pillars of Resilience, originally identified by Dr. Martin Seligman and his team. Our aim is to assist you in weaving these throughout your life and your work in healthcare.
Take a moment to think about the 6 Pillars of Resilience might already be present within your work.
Two ways to think about resilience:
- The ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences and by flexible adaptation to the changing demands of stressful experiences (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004).
- The ability to expand our Range of Resiliency to grow our capacity while limiting the negative impact of stress. This is best understood as the ability to do more with less mental, physical, and emotional energy. This is when we primarily stay out of, or limit, a state of overwhelm, chronic doing, or chronic input in the form of work, relationships, and technology. Basically, never giving ourselves time to rest.
What areas in your work can you think of now where these abilities will be helpful?
How Resilience Shows Up in Your Work
Take a few minutes to sit quietly and remember a recent (last 6 months) moment where you were amazed by Resilience.
Take time with each of these separately. In practicing slowing down to notice the amazing, we'll increase our likelihood to look for these moments more often.
- In yourself (at work)
- In a team member or mentor
- By a patient or their family
What do you remember of these times you've recognized resilience?
Things that Grow and Steal your Resilience
A crucial step to building and expanding our resilience is understand how certain behaviors or environmental factors grow and steal our resilience at work. The lists below are meant as a few examples, but take a few moments now to review what grows and steals your resilience at work.
Things that grow your resilience (we want to spend more time on these):
- Taking care of your body
- Sleep
- Proper nutritional habits
- Exercise/movement
- Knowing when and how to shut off work
- Surrounding yourself with supportive co-workers and mentors
Things that steal your resilience (we want to limit these):
- Multitasking-creates too much activation in our brains
- Not taking sufficient breaks
- Not being able to say no when you should
Benefits of being Resilient in Healthcare
- Make hard decisions
- Increased connection with patients and team members
- Burnout prevention
- Helps hold meaning to your work
- Transitions with you between work and home
- Increased optimism
To take a deer dive
Dr. Sapolsky marvelously explains why animals in the wild don't suffer from the same chronic stress we humans struggle with. Dive in if you'd like to know the science behind all this from a human operation standpoint.