In this session with BC Children’s Hospital Research, Denise Findlay facilitates a discussion on resilience in health care. Click to view:
Resilience is a remarkable construct – an overarching metaphor that touches on the arenas of stress, neural plasticity, emotional health, recovery, healing, mental illness, adaptation, defendedness, and therapy. It is relevant to everyone in most every caring role, particularly, in healthcare where burn out levels are high due to the chronic stress characteristic of the environments healthcare workers exist on a daily basis.
Fresh understandings are coming to the fore as we glean more working knowledge of the brain as well as the nature of emotion. The implications for working with children are profound, never mind the implications for dealing with stress in our own lives and in the lives of our loved ones.
The construct of resilience, once truly understood, is universal in its application. We all face adversity; no one is immune. Knowing how to foster resilience and recovery should be one of our main conceptual tools for taking care of ourselves and those who depend upon us. The knowledge of resilience has universal application. No person, parent or teacher should be without these understandings. But neither should any helping professionals, as this knowledge informs the helping relationship.
