How Resiliency Training Fails Us: From Pizza Parties to ‘Health Care Heroes’

In the midst of this pandemic, the term “resilience" has been thrown around flippantly in relation to the health care community. Organizations have created a variety of strategies thought to improve morale and resiliency amongst health care workers, including hosting pizza parties and cafeteria coffee, offering online resilience modules, and even coining the term "health care heroes'', to name a few. However, they have fallen short.

As practicing hospice and palliative care team members, we have already proven our resilient nature by caring for patients and families navigating serious illness. In this Master Clinician session, Michelle Owens, DO, and Brenda Schiltz, MD, discuss the term “resilience” in relation to our field. As leaders and advocates of clinician self-care, they explore strategies to improve personal and system level well-being—from evidence-based self-care focused on gratitude, self-compassion, and connection, to advocating for organizational change.