Many organisations and professionals tend to focus more upon one area of everyday living than another while at the same time trying to deliver a compassionate service. Medical services are one example  where people can become so focused upon what they are trying to achieve, they can lose sight of the other needs a person might have. Resilience is another area of our lives that people focus upon as a psychological approach to living well, when in fact it is also a very social  (think of loneliness) and physical (think of diet and exercise) activity. Compassionate resilience using the evidence based model I have outlined in previous blogs, helps us to be more holistic and to consider the whole needs of a person, and ourselves not just one or two. Without all 5 areas of resilience we run the risk of failing in one of them and reducing our resilience in everyday life. We may  need to consider therefore where our services develop holistic compassion as a way of promoting resilience in the workforce and in the people we work for so that they can recover.  To do this  it might be helpful to have a scoring sytem that will alert us all to the risk of our resilience failing when under pressure or constraints e.g. lack of resources or money.

I have devised this simple score card that will help us to do this on a daily basis and will alert us to the compassionate needs of ourselves and others quickly. Your feedback would be very helpful so please feel free to try and share.

Resilience In Self Knowledge (RISK). Score 0-2 for each of the following

REST –   7-8 hours per night of good quality sleep

REFLECT  – Daily discussion, meditation or mindfulness

RESPIRE – Deep breathing  (4/7/8) clean air daily

REPLENISH – Daily fresh food limiting alcohol, sugar, fast food, drugs

RELAX – Daily enjoyable, achievable, occupation

SCORE– 10 – 8=Excellent   6-4 Okay 4-2 Poor  2-0 =Urgent Support Needed

Nurses and other health and social care professions are at a high risk of poor resilience as they often work long shifts, skip meals and lack time to reflect and even respire properly. As a profession ” good will” is a part of everyday life working in health and social care. If we do not take notice of our own resilience score however we will no longer be able to function in the role that we all enjoy.  This RISK score will also help us to develop positive risk mangement strategies with the many vulnerable people in our care.