Resilience in the workplace

Some posts ask a LOT of their personnel
Some push people to the edge of the tolerable envelope

There is nothing wrong with a demanding job per se.
The is nothing wrong with stretching people - indeed it helps to build resilience if done sensitively.

But here is the caveat - one does need to check that people are not being constantly overstretched
and that the demands being made of them are not pushing them beyond what they can reasonably manage... day after day after day

And this is where many employers - including sadly the NHS ( an organisation one might like to think had health and healthy workplaces high on its agenda ) simply fail to deliver.

Building a resilience culture starts from acknowledging that people are not workhorses but individuals with differing needs, personalities, skills, comfort zones, risk aversion ( I could go on).

Training in resilience and avoiding burnout are now becoming common place in the USA as they have twigged that they are losing physicians and I don't just mean to the commercial world. 400 doctors a year in the US commit suicide. Admittedly they have more doctors than we do in the UK but this is bad because it is nearly 3 times the average rate of suicide in the population. 

Chicken and egg - are more suicide prone people attracted to medicine?
Are medical training courses and working patterns more likely to cause their trainees to develop mental problems?
There are many questions to answer.

But it is vital that more training of resilience and self care and burnout prevention skills take place.
Few medics I have spoken to have received any training in these areas.