Content area
Full text
Nurses' mental and physical health affect how they care for patients. Jenny Sergeant and Colette Laws-Chapman suggest how managers can improve teamwork and raise morale through 'emotional resilience' training
Abstract
This article considers the link between emotional resilience and the mental and physical wellbeing of healthcare staff, and how this affects leadership and patient care. The authors outline six steps to building and sustaining emotional resilience. In two NHS surveys (Boorman 2009, Healthcare Commission 2010) staff reported that their physical health and emotional wellbeing affected their ability to undertake daily activities and their ability to care for patients. Some NHS trusts are addressing staff wellbeing through emotional resilience training. Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, for example, includes it in its preceptorship programme, which supports transition from student to staff nurse.
Keywords
Emotional resilience, self-awareness, values
Emotional resilience is a term used to describe individuals' abilities to adapt to various adverse conditions while maintaining a sense of purpose, balance and positive mental and physical wellbeing. We live and work in constantly changing and demanding environments where stress is a fact of life. However, understanding stress and its effect on our emotions and behaviours, and having the tools to deal with it, can create a pathway to resilience.
The NHS Health and Wellbeing Review (Boorman 2009) identified clear links between staff health and wellbeing and three dimensions of service quality: patient safety, patient experience and the effectiveness of patient care.
The psychological effects of everyday stress can be destabilising and, although people may not take time off work, stress can affect their focus, attention to detail, productivity and behaviour (Kuoppala et al 2008). Teams that operate in stressful environments are less collaborative and more likely to make mistakes (Business in the Community 2009). Building emotional resilience, therefore, can create healthier workplace cultures, reduce absenteeism, improve teamwork and raise morale.
Resilience training can take different forms. For example, the IT company IBM (Sill 2011) set up the Integrated Health Services organisation for its employees, which involves occupational medicine, health benefits and wellness professionals. The service also runs employee wellbeing programmes that address the changing health and safety needs of the company's staff worldwide.
One of the main features of the IBM programme is that...