Resilience

Resilience

I recently read an article in the British Medical Journal by Diann Eley from University of Queensland in Australia (d.eley@uq.edu.au)

Resilience is an attribute which helps individuals to bounce back from encounters and allows them to endure and flourish in their work environment. Resilient individuals are better equipped to meet challenges, learn from them and further develop their resilience.

Assessments of General Practitioners showed strong correlations between personality traits and resilience.

Self Directedness. Self directed individuals are conscientious and goal oriented. They accept responsibility for mistakes, learn from them and move on.

Cooperativeness. Cooperative individuals accept the opinions and behaviours of colleagues even when they are contrary to their own.

They don’t lose sight of their own principles but work out solutions to achieve the best outcome for everyone. Consciously becoming more tolerant and accepting the behaviours and points of view of others lowers levels of frustration.

Harm Avoidance. Clinicians who are low in harm avoidance are decisive and less anxious. Their ability to accept uncertainty and a degree of risk generates confidence for decision making in clinical dilemmas and emergencies. High harm avoidance levels reflect a tendency towards anxiety and pessimism.

Persistence. Persistence reflects a bias towards maintaining behaviour with stamina despite frustration, fatigue or discouragement. This trait can be associated with perfectionism and this risk can be avoided by accepting your limitations setting realistic goals.

To enhance your resilience you should know which personality traits are associated with high resilience and be aware of your own traits.

Reflecting on the realities of your working life is a good way to start becoming more self aware.  It will be necessary to ask yourself questions about your expectations of yourself and others.  Are these expectations realistic ? Reflect on why you are often dissatisfied. It may be that you are not as cooperative and tolerant as you think.

One exercise is to recognise the positive outcomes of your day. Do this on a daily basis even if these positive outcomes seem small.

Another is to take control over some part of your day and allow for “time outs” no matter how short, over which you have control.

This is a useful method to help dentists to regain control of their appointment system when it is controlling them.

A third exercise is to share an experience or problem with colleagues, friends or family. Often just talking about a challenging event can be a powerful way to put your situation in perspective, learn from it and move on.