Resilience Essay

The concept of resilience is a complex and multifaceted construct, particularly in healthcare. There are many factors that influence an individual’s resilience, and it is of vital importance that healthcare professionals and consumers alike recognize and promote the elements that contribute to it. Having strong influencing factors, which include coping strategies, social support, baseline characteristics and adaptive mechanisms, allows healthcare workers to care for their own mental wellbeing, as well as allowing patients to better recover and rebound from injury and illness.

Although the definition of resilience often varies, it is commonly accepted that the concept of resilience depends on two basic assumptions: the occurrence of an adverse or stressing event in the individual 's life, and the development of psychological mechanisms that allow for surmounting such traumatic events (Gartland et al., 2011). Furthermore, whilst resilience was once thought to be an innate characteristic of an individual, it is currently considered to be a dynamic process, developed throughout the lifespan by facing and overcoming adversity. (Lemos, Moraes & Pellanda, 2016). Therefore, resilience is not considered to be absent or present in someone, but rather

What they all have in common is they demonstrate how an individual can cope with an adverse event or stressing factors in life, and learn to thrive afterwards. Adaptive mechanisms, baseline characteristics, social support and coping strategies are most the common factors contributing to resilience. It is due to the strenuous and sometimes traumatic nature of healthcare professions, and the stressful situation of disease or injury, it is of vital importance that these factors to improve resilience are promoted to all healthcare professionals so they cannot only better care for their own mental wellbeing, but also that of the