Western Cape Department of Health

• Everyday resilience is important to ensure health workers can cope with daily stressors, and take action to change their circumstances when they are confronted with challenges.
• At a health system level, everyday resilience means that health workers can deal with the systemic challenges in their work environment.
• We draw on research around resilience in the health sector to highlight why it’s important to focus on it for health workers and for the health system as a whole.

Health workers

• The rate of burnout in health workers is high throughout the world.
• This was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic which contributed to alarming levels of anxiety, depression and traumatic stress among South African health workers.
• There have been suggestions about how to build resilience in health workers, including medical students, against daily workplace stresses.
• For example, studies have argued that building resilience in frontline health workers may hide the systemic challenges.

What does such a focus offer the health system?

• Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Western Cape Department of Health in South Africa introduced the concept of daily huddles.
• They included managers from all levels of the health system – including the private health sector – as well as managers from other sectors of government.
• The meetings enabled managers to work across silos in the health system across administration and health programmes, for example.
• Our colleagues who were part of these huddles reported that they used these to build on long-standing initiatives in the province to strengthen the health system.

Organic learning systems

• The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted various challenges to health workers and health systems.
• What is clear is that unless health systems are organic learning systems and continuously focus on building systems for resilience, we may run the risk of learning anew each time health workers and health systems face a catastrophic event.