A few months ago I wrote the blog below about resilience in nursing, it received a lot of attention on Twitter and through the blogs comments section (the original blogs is posted HERE) which is why I thought that it would make a good basis for a Twitter discussion:

I think that’s it’s time to open up the debate on the term resilience – I have a problem with resilience, I know its en-vogue currently for nurses to be resilient, and in theory I get why, but in reality I am not so sure.

How about we start this with a definition …. The internet says resilience is:

I think this is where my problem with resilience starts – recovering quickly, bouncing back and toughness are concepts I find hard to reconcile as a nurse.  Here’s the rub .. I don’t think that I am resilient.  When things upset me I often take them to heart, I can find it hard to recover quickly and spring back and I am not sure that I need to.  I feel what I need are good support networks and self-care so that I can reflect and grow from experiences.  When something adverse happens, I don’t want to be resilient, I want to be human, but I want someone to ask me if I am OK … in the same way that I would ask them.

I recall a particularly tough day whilst working as a care home manager a good few years ago now.  I felt really ill, I had a really bad head cold, I had been in work since 5 am, I was dealing with a number of incidents and short staffing.  I had a phone conversation with my manager during which I asked if it was ok if I left early as I wasn’t feeling 100% and had been at work since very early … she told me I had to be more resilient.  I got off the phone and sat and cried.  Whilst I was crying at my desk another of my managers walked in – he asked, “are you ok?” Of course, I wasn’t but he sat and listened. We brainstormed a few things to help with the staffing and the incidents and he told me to go home and rest.  The first manager epitomised everything I hate about the term resilience and the second show cased everything that is right about supporting one another.

Having had a few discussions on Twitter about resilience I can understand that it’s not the term itself but perhaps how we apply it.  With this in mind it is only fair to look at resilience in the context of health (and not just an internet, black and white – definition) Murray (2014)states:

“Resilience can be defined as ‘the ability of an individual to cope with and adapt positively to adverse circumstances’. Resilience has been identified as comprising a serious of personality traits such as optimism, self-efficacy and hardiness which enable an individual to cope with increased adversity. Increasingly, resilience is viewed as the combination of internal and external factors, a dynamic process which develops over time and one which can be learned” 

I agree that we need this! I agree that as nurses we need to be able to cope with increased adversity and yes I love that resilience could be a combination of self-care (internal factors) and support (external factors) I do take exception to the word “hardiness” here but let’s set that aside as the definition within the context of health sounds pretty utopian to me and perhaps what we should all be aiming for. To me though this description is not resilience as I have seen it.

This leads me to think that resilience is the wrong word, I think that it does what we are trying to achieve in nursing a huge disservice.  This isn’t about toughness or bounce-back-ability this is about support and self-care. It’s about what we do to take care of ourselves and what our colleagues and organisations do to take care of us.

So what is the way forward? How do we equip the nursing profession with the skills to cope with adversity? I don’t think that anyone has or ever will become more resilient by a colleague telling them that they need to be resilient! The term resilience, when used like this, seems rather like telling the profession to “man up”! This is not healthy or productive.

I rather like what the police are doing…. Have you heard of Oscar Kilo? There is a great link here that explains all.

The Oscar Kilo website states:

 “We need to get the message to our staff that “it’s ok not to be ok”

Oscar Kilo doesn’t talk about resilience it talks about health and wellbeing.  It acknowledges that policing is tough and that people are affected by the things they see and the role they have but it focusses on support, health and wellbeing.

I guess at the heart of this is that I feel that the term “resilience” is a spoiled fruit.  I can see that there are good intentions by encouraging nursing and nurses to be resilient but I don’t think that this term can be used as its synonymous with hardiness, bouncing back, being tough and manning up … and do you know what … it is ok not to be ok!  I think that we should acknowledge that nursing is tough and learn and grow form this, support ourselves and each other … ask that question to yourself and to colleagues … are you ok today?

So with this in mind here are some of the questions I thought it would be good to explore:

• What are your thoughts about the term resilience?
• Is resilience needed in nursing?
• Do you think we should ditch the term resilience in nursing? 
• What do you think about "it's ok not to be OK"?
• Are nurses supported enough to "not be OK"? 
• How can we recognise when we are not OK and need support?
• What can each of us do to support colleagues who are not OK?