Guest editorial: What’s wrong with resilience

Moral Distress and Austerity: An Avoidable Ethical Challenge in Healthcare

“…However, as some commentators have argued—focusing on personal or moral resilience risks placing all the burden on the individual and absolves the institution of responsibility [70, 71]. In the context of austerity and cuts to resources, responses that only target individual responses are insufficient.…”

“…Avoidable challenges created because of systemic and political austerity policies require a different kind of resilience. Traynor critiques the notion of personal resilience, arguing that it is “a term that supports the status quo” (p. 5), and that resilience teaches nurses how to “roll with the punches”, successfully subverting a huge workforce into believing if they learn how to overcome challenges on a personal level they can survive in healthcare [71]. According to this line of thought, once it is accepted that HCPs need to be resilient to cope with a particular kind of challenge, it is then expanded to cover all challenges, becoming a universal curative.…”

What Medical Imaging Professionals Talk About When They Talk About Compassion

“…Self-care is an aspect of professionalism which is less well supported by the employer; suggestions such as cultivating resilience tend to be added to the pile of responsibilities required of already hard-pressed practitioners. Instead, they could practice critical resilience 41 by gaining an understanding of, and then resisting the political and policy forces shaping their working practice; for example, taking the time to include acts of compassion when needed, disregarding organisational and cultural pressures to speed throughput. MI professionals do try to support themselves although self-help strategies such as mindfulness despite negative stereotypical associations noticed by some as ''hippy''.…”

Resilience in critical care nurses – is it desirable?

“…Traynor () argues the promotion of resilience masks the complexity of wider organizational and national issues and shifts the responsibility of problems away from political and leadership decision‐makers onto the individual nurse. According to Traynor (), there is unspoken anxiety in the nursing profession from persistent adversity leading to very high student nurse dropout rates, increased turnover of staff and worsening burnout.…”