Nursing management: nurturing your team’s resilience is vital
The ability to quickly recover from difficulties, shocks or stress is key to individual and team resilience and well-being. Nursing managers can 76ysupport their staff and help to nurture a more resilient workplace and workforce, which will in turn boost well-being and adaptability
Nursing managers can support their staff and help to nurture a more resilient workplace and workforce, which will in turn boost well-being and adaptability
The concept of resilience continues to be met with controversy among the nursing workforce.
Detractors of the word believe it unfairly places the onus on individual nurses to maintain their own ‘bouncebackability’ in the face of intense pressures, removing any responsibility from employers to provide a safe and effective workplace environment.
‘Nurse managers and leaders have a fundamental responsibility to support their staff and assist in the development of a more resilient workplace and workforce’
NHS trusts and other healthcare organisations have a duty to provide robust processes in their employees’ practice to ensure they are adequately supported during and after any stressors or extended demanding periods.
The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of resilience reinforces this notion when it refers to the psychological capacity of people or systems to quickly recover from difficulties, shocks or stress, as well as adapting and maintaining well-being.
People who have more resilience tend to cope better with stress and learn from negative experiences
Yet individual resilience is also an important skill for nurses to foster for their own mental health and well-being.
People who are more resilient tend to cope better with, and adapt to, stress, learning from negative experiences and avoiding dwelling on failures or shortcomings. It is also recognised that well-being and resilience have a positive effect on the quality of patient care.
Nurse managers and leaders have a fundamental responsibility to support their staff and assist in the development of a more resilient workplace and workforce.
In our open access CPD article, Enhancing well-being and resilience in oneself and in the nursing team, the authors explain the theory behind the concepts of well-being and resilience.
They introduce two conceptual models which can support nurses’ well-being and resilience, and also present individual, team and organisational tools as well as practices for enhancing them for themselves and their nursing teams.
Their work proposes a systems-wide approach to the issue and discusses how organisational and team cultures and approaches impact individual resilience, and why it is so important that nurse managers do everything in their power to create an environment where psychological safety is the norm.
