Properly performing health care systems require concepts and methods that match their complexity. Resilience engineering provides that capability. It focuses on a system’s overall ability to sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions rather than on individual features or qualities. This book contains contributions from international experts in health care, organisational studies and patient safety, as well as resilience engineering. Whereas current safety approaches primarily aim to reduce the number of things that go wrong, Resilient Health Care aims to increase the number of things that go right.
Humans are remarkably resilient in the face of crises, traumas, disabilities, attachment losses and ongoing adversities. To date, most research in the field of traumatic stress has focused on neurobiological, psychological and social factors associated with trauma-related psychopathology and deficits in psychosocial functioning. Far less is known about resilience to stress and healthy adaptation to stress and trauma. This book brings together experts from a broad array of scientific fields whose research has focused on adaptive responses to stress. Each of the five sections in the book examines the relevant concepts, spanning from factors that contribute to and promote resilience, to populations and societal systems in which resilience is employed, to specific applications and contexts of resilience and interventions designed to better enhance resilience. This will be suitable for clinicians and researchers who are interested in resilience across the lifespan and in response to a wide variety of stressors.
This book has two goals: to educate healthcare professionals about the effect of identity-based adversity on the health of their LGBT patients, and to outline how providers can use the clinical encounter to promote LGBT patients’ resilience in the face of adversity and thereby facilitate recovery. Toward this end, it addresses trauma in LGBT populations; factors that contribute to resilience both across the lifespan and in specific groups; and strategies for promoting resilience in clinical practice. Each chapter includes a case scenario with discussion questions and practice points that highlight critical clinical best practices. The editors and contributors are respected experts on the health of LGBT people, and the book will be a “first of its kind” resource for all clinicians who wish to become better educated about, and provide high quality healthcare to, their LGBT patients.
A major objective of this volume is to create and share knowledge about the socio-economic, political and cultural dimensions of climate change. The authors analyze the effects of climate change on the social and environmental determinants of the health and well-being of communities (i.e. poverty, clean air, safe drinking water, food supplies) and on extreme events such as floods and hurricanes. The book covers topics such as the social and political dimensions of the ebola response, inequalities in urban migrant communities, as well as water-related health effects of climate change. The contributors recommend political and social-cultural strategies for mitigate, adapt and prevent the impacts of climate change to human and environmental health. The book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners interested in new methods and tools to reduce risks and to increase health resilience to climate change.
In the devastation that follows a major disaster, there is a need for multiple sectors to unite and devote new resources to support the rebuilding of infrastructure, the provision of health and social services, the restoration of care delivery systems, and other critical recovery needs. In some cases, billions of dollars from public, private and charitable sources are invested to help communities recover. National rhetoric often characterizes these efforts as a "return to normal." But for many American communities, pre-disaster conditions are far from optimal. Large segments of the U.S. population suffer from preventable health problems, experience inequitable access to services, and rely on overburdened health systems. A return to pre-event conditions in such cases may be short-sighted given the high costs - both economic and social - of poor health. Instead, it is important to understand that the disaster recovery process offers a series of unique and valuable opportunities to improve on the status quo. Capitalizing on these opportunities can advance the long-term health, resilience, and sustainability of communities - thereby better preparing them for future challenges. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters identifies and recommends recovery practices and novel programs most likely to impact overall community public health and contribute to resiliency for future incidents. This book makes the case that disaster recovery should be guided by a healthy community vision, where health considerations are integrated into all aspects of recovery planning before and after a disaster, and funding streams are leveraged in a coordinated manner and applied to health improvement priorities in order to meet human recovery needs and create healthy built and natural environments. The conceptual framework presented in Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters lays the groundwork to achieve this goal and provides operational guidance for multiple sectors involved in community planning and disaster recovery. Healthy, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities After Disasters calls for actions at multiple levels to facilitate recovery strategies that optimize community health. With a shared healthy community vision, strategic planning that prioritizes health, and coordinated implementation, disaster recovery can result in a communities that are healthier, more livable places for current and future generations to grow and thrive - communities that are better prepared for future adversities.
Suffering is an unavoidable reality in health care. Not only are patients and families suffering but also the clinicians who care for them. Commonly the suffering experienced by clinicians is moral in nature, in part a reflection of the increasing complexity of health care, their roles within it, and the expanding range of available interventions. Moral suffering is the anguish that occurs when the burdens of treatment appear to outweigh the benefits; scarce human and material resources must be allocated; informed consent is incomplete or inadequate; or there are disagreements about goals of treatment among patients, families or clinicians. Each is a source of moral adversity that challenges clinicians' integrity: the inner harmony that arises when their essential values and commitments are aligned with their choices and actions. If moral suffering is unrelieved it can lead to disengagement, burnout, and undermine the quality of clinical care. The most studied response to moral adversity is moral distress. The sources and sequelae of moral distress, one type of moral suffering, have been documented among clinicians across specialties. It is vital to shift the focus to solutions and to expanded individual and system strategies that mitigate the detrimental effects of moral suffering. Moral resilience, the capacity of an individual to restore or sustain integrity in response to moral adversity, offers a path forward. It encompasses capacities aimed at developing self-regulation and self-awareness, buoyancy, moral efficacy, self-stewardship and ultimately personal and relational integrity. Clinicians and healthcare organizations must work together to transform moral suffering by cultivating the individual capacities for moral resilience and designing a new architecture to support ethical practice. Used worldwide for scalable and sustainable change, the Conscious Full Spectrum approach, offers a method to solve problems to support integrity, shift patterns that undermine moral resilience and ethical practice, and source the inner potential of clinicians and leaders to produce meaningful and sustainable results that benefit all.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has been an ultimate challenge for leadership resiliency. Resilient leaders are thoughtful and deliberate. They balance logic and emotion, ego and humility. They lead through compassionate empathy by focusing on the ‘how’, not only the ‘what’. They use their influence to drive positive change, diversity and inclusion, and create an equitable community. Most books on resilient leadership appear to focus on spirituality and tools to grow an “unshakable core of calm, strength, and happiness” or “bounce back without getting stuck in the toxic emotions of guilt, false guilt, anger, and bitterness”. These books are very similar to handbooks focusing on mental toughness and providing guides for overcoming adversity and managing negative emotions. This book, however, defines resilience as a critical competency of high-performing leaders. Leaders must cultivate resilience in themselves and foster it throughout their organizations and multidisciplinary teams in order to adapt and succeed. Resilience in Healthcare Leadership is differentiated by offering practical strategies and self-assessment instruments for identifying strengths and weaknesses and for developing and sustaining the performance of resilient leaders. The book will also focus on best practices to help build a talent pipeline and develop resilient care team leaders to effectively manage the challenges of disruptive environments. Whether senior or mid-level manager the reader will learn to apply knowledge and skills to initiate cultural change, assess strengths and weaknesses, align leadership roles with organizational goals, and position themselves to become a resilient leader. The reader will also learn how to identify message strategies consistent with stakeholders’ needs, resolve conflicts, lead multidisciplinary teams, and realize the impact of resilient leadership in influencing outcomes. Takeaways and tools are included to guide progressive learning and leadership development and build a strong succession pipeline, to help organizations become more prepared to respond to challenges facing healthcare leaders in the future.
Stress and Your Health: From Vulnerability to Resilience presents an evidence-based evaluation of the various effects of stress, along with methods to alleviate distress and stress-related illnesses. Examines myriad stressor effects and proven ways to alleviate stress in our lives Covers a wide range of stressor-related topics including therapeutic strategies to deal with stress and factors that hinder treatment of stress Makes difficult biochemical and immunological concepts accessible to a non-specialist audience Addresses many of the factors that cause individuals to be more vulnerable to the impact of stressors and at increased risk for pathology
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Laughter is the best medicine.” Readers Digest has been telling us this for years, but until recently there was no real evidence to back up the claim. This book discusses the exciting findings scientists have obtained over the past 25 years for how your sense of humor supports good physical and mental health. A separate chapter discusses humor and the brain. The first studies of humor and health demonstrated humor’s ability to strengthen the immune system, reduce pain and reduce levels of stress hormones circulating in the body. These general health-promoting benefits led researchers to study the impact of humor and laughter on specific diseases. This exciting new work has now shown health benefits of humor in connection with coronary heart disease, asthma, COPD, arthritis, certain allergies and diabetes. The two cerebral hemispheres of the brain are shown to play different roles in our understanding and enjoyment of humor. Also, specific dopamine-based pleasure centers in the brain have now been identified which account for the good feeling that results from humor and a good belly laugh. The key to understanding humor’s contribution to health and wellness is its ability to both build more positive emotion into your life and reduce feelings of anger, anxiety and depression. Humor helps provide the emotional resilience needed to meet the challenges presented by steadily increasing stress in our personal and work lives. It is a powerful tool for coping with any form of life stress, and a means of sustaining a positive, optimistic attitude toward life. And it’s never too late to improve your sense of humor. The companion to this book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World (also published by AuthorHouse), presents a hands-on program for learning to use humor to cope.
Healthcare professionals and their organisations are subject to growing pressures, including regular reviews and reorganisations, coping with the impact of an aging population, financial pressures, shrinking of career prospects and enhanced expectations of what a healthcare system can do. This practical guide has been written specifically for individuals who are experiencing anxieties engendered by working in healthcare. It examines the reasons why healthcare organisations are susceptible to these difficulties and considers the possible causes of such stress.
