Resilient Doctors

How can Doctors develop their resilience and bounce back from adversity?

Resilience is not something that you either have or have not. It depends on the circumstances and how you handle yourself when faced with different difficulties. Knowing what kinds of things stress you and what core assumptions you have about yourself, can help you access your strengths quicker and work on your weaknesses more deliberately. For example, you might be comfortable handling negative comments from a colleague, but find it really difficult coping with rejection for a post. Knowing this and recognising the power you have to change how you handle things, is critical to developing your resilience. A useful tool I often use with clients is the FREE i-resilence model that helps people understand what are the key features of resilience and where their strengths and weaknesses lie within the model. The four key components of resilience in this model are: Confidence - An important element of feeling confident is the frequency of positive and negative emotions that you experience. As I've written before on this blog, managing your emotions and taking time to notice and cultivate the positive can have a very beneficial impact and give you a greater sense of control. Social Support - Constantly coping on your own is not healthy. We all need help and cultivating strong bonds at work and at home is important. Nurturing your relationships and investing time in others will help you and allow you gain perspective on situations. Adaptability - Accepting the fact that lots of things are out of our control (especially in the NHS) is part of our adaptability. Moving on and recovering from unexpected outcomes can mean you don't stay angry or frustrated with situations for too long. Purposefulness - Knowing what you are here for and what gets you out of bed in the morning. A big part of this is your personal values so assessing and identifying what your core values are will help you drive your behaviour and performance more deliberately. Why not access this tool for free and reflect on how resilient you are and what you want to get better at? I'd be happy to talk over your results with you. Contact me on 0754 0593476 or email me on alexishutson@yahoo.com

Lack of resilience predisposes you to burnout, it increases your predisposition toward stress, which causes you to go into a deeper hole. You feel like what you are doing is not worthwhile, and you have a sense of disengagement toward your work.” Amit Sood, M.D.