Individual and organizational resilience-Insights from healthcare providers in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic

The dynamics of intercultural clinical encounters in times of pandemic crisis. Swedish healthcare providers' reflections on social norms in relation to sexual and reproductive healthcare

BACKGROUND

Experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic may help to better understand resilience, competences and skills for healthcare providers and the healthcare system. Within sexual and reproductive health inequalities for migrants exist and it is an area where promoting both cultural competency and healthcare equity in the clinical encounter is expected of healthcare providers yet can create tension. The aim is to explore healthcare providers experiences of encounters with migrants in the context of the pandemic and the subsequent changes in routines and norms.

METHODS

A qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with 31 healthcare providers working in sexual and reproductive healthcare in southern Sweden. Interviews were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic influencing how healthcare providers reflected on their experiences. Analysis was done using reflexive thematic data analysis.

FINDINGS

Healthcare providers reflected on how changes in routines increased the understanding of challenges and enablers in the intercultural encounter including the impact on communication and role of relatives and male partners. They emphasized the dynamics of culture in the clinical encounter and healthcare system through highlighting the importance of structural awareness, self-reflection and the flexibility of conducts and norms, often given a cultural connotation.

CONCLUSION

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in changes of previously established routines directly affecting clinical encounters, which provided a unique opportunity for healthcare providers to reflect, with communication and self-reflection being discussed as central in complex encounters. It highlighted the dynamics of presumed deeply rooted cultural norms and the interplay with social factors affecting healthcare providers and patients alike.

Building towards organisational resilience and complexity leadership: a case study of impacts and changes in a Dutch blood establishment during COVID-19

OBJECTIVES

This study examined how one large blood-related establishment coped and adapted during the first 1.5 years of the pandemic by evaluating the impacts and changes on its resources, communication, collaborations, and monitoring and feedback. Furthermore, we explored whether elements of complexity leadership emerged during this time.

DESIGN

Duchek's organisational resilience framework was primarily used. We followed a three-step sequential approach: (1) a document analysis of over 150 intranet, internet and internal reports; (2) 31 semistructured interviews with employees and (3) four feedback sessions.

SETTING

Sanquin is known as the Dutch national blood bank and a large multidivisional expertise organisation in the Netherlands.

RESULTS

Sanquin coped well. Respondents accepted the crisis and catalysed many collaborations to implement solutions, which were communicated to the public. There were many positive aspects related to internal collaborations, yet challenges remained related to its historical siloed structure and culture. Sanquin adapted partially. Many respondents experienced the organisation becoming more connected and flexible during the pandemic. However, Sanquin was not permanently changed due to significant leadership changes and organisational restructuring occurring simultaneously. Respondents reflected on lessons learnt, including the need for continual collaboration and improvements in Sanquin's culture. An important driver in the successful coping was management's enabling attitude and the adaptations occurring within and through the collaborative groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Sanquin improved its organisational resilience by exhibiting elements of adaptive spaces, enabling leadership and (temporary) emergence from complexity leadership. This illuminates how the organisation could continue benefiting from complexity leadership for non-crises and for future uncertainties.

"Something we must be proud of": An interview and document study of team improvisation in the Dutch convalescent plasma project group

Background and Aims

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance of organizational resilience, the ability to effectively respond to a disruptive event before, during, and after it occurs. Team improvisation is an important component of organizational resilience as it describes characteristics of team skills and contextual qualities to create order from chaos. In Spring 2020, the Dutch national blood bank, began the convalescent plasma project (CCP). We aimed to study which elements of team improvisation in the CCP group were found and how lessons learned can contribute towards a non-crisis situation for blood establishments.

Methods

Using Vera and Crossan's framework of improvisation, semi-structured interviews with eight members of the CCP group were conducted. This was simultaneous to performing a document analysis of 21 Intranet posts and seven internal reports. MAXDA 2020 was used to conduct deductive and inductive thematic analyses.

Results

The CCP group showed strong characteristics of expertise and memory, teamwork quality, experimental culture, and real-time information and communication that enabled them to improvise in all aspects of the donation process. Improvisation examples included comprehensive communication methods to identify and obtain new donors, asking additional intake questions and collecting additional aliquots to store while waiting for an internal antibody test to be developed, and regulatory respondents allowing a flexible change control procedure to meet the pace of the crisis. Training was evident to a lesser degree.

Conclusion

While improvisation impacted set routines and procedures, the safety and quality of the product were not affected. Regarding organizational resilience, our results showed that the CCP group "coped" well using elements of team improvisation. Blood establishments may consider introducing improvisational training and innovation teams throughout the organization for future preparedness and improving organizational resilience.

Resilience, job satisfaction, occupational stress, and occupational accidents among healthcare professionals: A Bayesian network analysis

BACKGROUND

Occupational accidents remain a critical challenge for healthcare professionals.

OBJECTIVE

In the present study, using the Bayesian network (BN) approach association among resilience, job satisfaction, stress, and occupational accidents among healthcare professionals is examined.

METHODS

Data was gathered using several valid questionnaires. The BN approach was utilized to analyze the r5/31/2024ionships between the variables of the current study. The performance of BN analysis was evaluated using related indexes.

RESULTS

In total, 300 healthcare professionals participated in this study. Results showed that almost 23% of healthcare professionals had experienced occupational accidents. Results of the sensitivity analysis demonstrated that job satisfaction had the most significant influence on occupational accidents in healthcare settings. The belief updating analysis results showed that by increasing job satisfaction and decreasing stress of healthcare professionals the occurrence of occupational accidents decreased 9.8% and 6.4%, respectively. Moreover, decreasing the stress of healthcare professionals can lead to an increase in the level of job satisfaction. Evaluation indexes showed that the performance of the developed BN was acceptable (error rate: 16.09).

CONCLUSION

The Findings reveal that both job satisfaction and stress had a significant influence on occupational accidents in healthcare professionals. Moreover, by influencing job satisfaction and stress, resilience can indirectly affect occupational accidents.

A bibliometric analysis of research on organizational resilience

Organizational resilience is a key concept in the study of sustainable corporate growth and indicates an organization's capacity to recover from adversity. It plays a crucial role in responding to uncertain crises. In recent years, academic interest in organizational resilience has increasingly gained prominence. This research uses CiteSpace and VOSviewer to provide a thorough visual analysis of pertinent international literature based on 342 pieces of closely linked literature about organizational resilience. The findings suggest that organizational resilience research is currently experiencing a development phase. Within this field, there is a substantial number of scholars involved, with the most prolific among them including Aleksic Aleksandar, Prayag Girish, and Griffiths Andrew. The networks of collaboration among these authors, nevertheless, are very scattered. Co-citation network research reveals the academics with the biggest sway in the field. Organizational resilience, conservation of resources theory, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, and emergency management are identified as research hotspots within the keyword co-citation network. Furthermore, to determine which countries and regions are the most influential, this study has created a cooperative network among them. China, the United States, and England are the top three nations with articles published. Not only are the highly cited journals respected in the management sector, but they also showcase noteworthy research accomplishments within the field. The purpose of this study is to investigate potential avenues for future research and offer helpful sources for choosing research subjects and developing theoretical frameworks in this area. The analysis is highly valuable as a reference for research on organizational resilience in different settings in the future.

A qualitative study of leaders' experiences of handling challenges and changes induced by the COVID-19 pandemic in rural nursing homes and homecare services

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on healthcare services globally. In care settings such as small rural nursing homes and homes care services leaders were forced to confront, and adapt to, both new and ongoing challenges to protect their employees and patients and maintain their organization's operation. The aim of this study was to assess how healthcare leaders, working in rural primary healthcare services, led nursing homes and homecare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the study sought to explore how adaptations to changes and challenges induced by the pandemic were handled by leaders in rural nursing homes and homecare services.

METHODS

The study employed a qualitative explorative design with individual interviews. Nine leaders at different levels, working in small, rural nursing homes and homecare services in western Norway were included.

RESULTS

Three main themes emerged from the thematic analysis: "Navigating the role of a leader during the pandemic," "The aftermath - management of COVID-19 in rural primary healthcare services", and "The benefits and drawbacks of being small and rural during the pandemic."

CONCLUSIONS

Leaders in rural nursing homes and homecare services handled a multitude of immediate challenges and used a variety of adaptive strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. While handling their own uncertainty and rapidly changing roles, they also coped with organizational challenges and adopted strategies to maintain good working conditions for their employees, as well as maintain sound healthcare management. The study results establish the intricate nature of resilient leadership, encompassing individual resilience, personality, governance, resource availability, and the capability to adjust to organizational and employee requirements, and how the rural context may affect these aspects.

Resilience and mindfulness among radiological personnel in Norway, their relationship and their impact on quality and safety- a questionnaire study

BACKGROUND

Stress and burnout are widespread problems among radiological personnel Individual and organizational resilience and mindfulness offer protection against burnout.

AIM

To investigate the level of resilience and mindfulness among radiological personnel, the associations between organizational resilience, individual resilience, and mindfulness, and how these factors impact the quality of care provided in radiological departments.

METHODS

An online questionnaire consisting of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, the Benchmark Resilience Tool, and questions regarding burnout, and quality and safety was used. Data analysis consisted of descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation and standard multiple regression.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

Few participants considered burnout a significant challenge. Individual and organizational resilience were low (30.40 ± 4.92 and 63.21 ± 13.63 respectively), and mindfulness was high (4.29 ± 0.88). There was a significant correlation between individual and organizational resilience (p = 0.004), between individual resilience and mindfulness (p = 0.03), and between organizational resilience and mindfulness (p = 0.02). Individual and organizational resilience affect each other. However; neither significantly affect quality and safety, nor mindfulness.

Community health workers for health systems resilience during COVID-19: protocol for qualitative evidence synthesis

INTRODUCTION

COVID-19 exposed the fragility of health systems, where even the most basic health services in high-income and low-income and middle-income nations could not withstand the health systems shock due to the pandemic. Community health workers (CHWs) can contribute to improving the resilience of health systems, specifically to withstand shocks and emergencies and to avoid disruptions of routine service delivery. We aim to explore and understand the 'individual' and 'systems-level' resilience factors that shaped the involvement of CHWs in the COVID-19 response.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

We will search five electronic databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, CINAHL and SciELO (Spanish)) and conduct citation screening to identify studies on CHWs' response during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two review authors will independently screen the studies for inclusion and to extract data. The software Rayyan will be used to assist in screening the relevant literature. A thematic analysis approach will be followed to analyse and synthesise the qualitative evidence. The quality of the included studies will be critically assessed using the Critical Skills Appraisal Programme Tool. We will use the GRADE CERQual(Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations - Confidence in the Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative Research) approach to assess certainty in the synthesised findings of the qualitative evidence.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

This study will be conducted on published evidence, with no living participants; thus, no ethical approval is required. The final review will be submitted and published in a peer-reviewed journal. We will also develop a policy brief to communicate the review findings to the stakeholders.

Trauma-Informed Professional Development: A Concept Analysis

GOAL

This study reports an analysis of the concept of trauma-informed professional development as it applies to staff nurses in health care organizations.

BACKGROUND

There is an urgent need for interventions to protect staff nurses from the psychological impact of traumatic events. By integrating the principles of trauma-informed care into professional development practices, nursing professional development practitioners have a unique opportunity to support nurses and help to promote recovery from trauma-related mental health outcomes. Data were obtained from a content searching service.

METHOD

Walker and Avant's approach to concept analysis was used (2019).

RESULTS

An operational definition of the concept of trauma-informed professional development as applied to staff nurses in health care organizations was developed. Potential benefits include staff nurse well-being, empowerment, resilience, and enhanced competency. Potential consequences for health care organizations include increased staff morale and retention.

CONCLUSION

By applying trauma-informed professional development activities, nursing professional development practitioners can minimize negative consequences when teaching topics that could unintentionally adversely affect some participants. [J Contin Educ Nurs. 2024;55(2):69-77.].

Perceived functional resilience in schools according to key stakeholders

Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Israel and numerous other governments closed schools as a precaution, leading to a sudden shift to online learning. The aim of the current study is to provide foundational insight into the perceived readiness of the school system to withstand future adversities, based on the challenges, complexities, as well as successes in adaptation faced by stakeholders during COVID-19. In this cross-sectional study, we assess the perceived levels of functional resilience of the school system among the key stakeholders of the Israeli education system-high school students, parents, teachers, and principals, as well as a composite functional resilience scale. The composite functional resilience consists of 10 main indexes: communication during distance learning (DL) and frontal learning (FL); Perceived stress scale-4 (PSS); psychosocial aspects during distance learning (DL) and frontal learning (FL); digital literacy; pedagogic support; resources; infrastructure; and distance versus frontal learning. The study findings demonstrate differences according to the stakeholders with regard to the perceived functional resilience and the composite functional resilience scores (e.g., students with respect to both of these scores exhibit the lowest results, while teachers display the highest scores). Furthermore, no one variable was significant across the board for all stakeholders in predicting the perceived functional resilience, with the most common predictors among the stakeholders being digital literacy, pedagogic support, PSS, as well as communication during distance and frontal learning. The findings of this study reveal areas for recommended priority actions to be conducted among school system stakeholders.

Impact of an online training tool on individual and organizational resilience and mindfulness among radiological personnel in Norway

BACKGROUND

Heavy workloads and increasing demands for productivity have contributed to rising rates of stress and burnout among radiological staff. Different forms of mindfulness and resilience-training might assist with stress management and protect these employees against burnout.

AIM

The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of an online training tool on individual and organizational resilience, mindfulness and quality of care.

METHODS

An online questionnaire was used, consisting of the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, the Benchmark Resilience Tool, and questions pertaining to quality, safety, and burnout (baseline = 68 participants between July 2022 - October 2022, follow-up = 13 participants between November 2022 - February 2023). Descriptive statistics and a paired-sampled t-test were used for statistical analysis.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Few participants reported completing any of the exercises. The baseline group had significantly higher mean resilience (p = 0.018) and mindfulness scores (p = < 0.001), mean decrease in scores was 7.46 for resilience and 1.7 for mindfulness. In conclusion, both individual and organizational resilience are perceived as low among radiological personnel in Norway. However, it does not seem to affect quality and safety.

An innovative tool to assess the functional resilience of a school system: learning from the COVID-19 pandemic

INTRODUCTION

Preparing the school system for a future crisis requires the ability to examine the effectiveness of schools' functioning during distant learning and their level of preparedness for future crises. Functional resilience (FR) is defined as the ability to maintain vital operational continuity in the face of disturbance. The study objectives included to develop a FR index of schools and to evaluate and validate it.

METHODS

To enable examination of the study objectives, the study design included tool development, followed by a validation process among 20 content experts. Concurrently, an eDelphi process for building an inclusive index, based on various components of resilience was conducted. The final study tool consists of four tailored questionnaires to examine perceptions of key stakeholders, i.e.- teachers, principals, parents, and highschool students regarding communication, psychosocial aspects, perceived stress, infrastructure, resources, pedagogic support, digital literacy, and perceived FR. Using an internet panel, the tool was disseminated cross-sectionally among the four groups of stakeholders.

RESULTS

The results showed high reliability of most of the scales developed. Furthermore, a high consensus level was reached on the relative importance of each component/ stakeholder to the schools FR. The findings further suggest that there were no significant differences in the composite FR score based on characteristics such as school type/ size/geographic location. However, the findings revealed interesting variations among stakeholders, with findings suggesting greater vulnerability among some.

DISCUSSION

To increase resilience and preparedness for future adversities that school systems may face, it is recommended to periodically incorporate an assessment based on a structured tool.

How relationship-maintenance strategies influence athlete burnout: Mediating roles of coach-athlete relationship and basic psychological needs satisfaction

Introduction

Athlete burnout has many potential negative effects on athletes' sporting performance and careers. Maintaining and promoting the coach-athlete relationship to meet athletes' basic psychological needs is one way to reduce burnout. Existing studies of the correlation between coach-athlete relationships and athlete burnout have mainly focused on the coaches' leadership style, with little attention given to relationship-maintenance strategies and the mechanism of athlete burnout from the athletes' perspective.

Methods

Using an online survey of 256 adolescent athletes, we explore the relationship between relationship-maintenance strategies and athlete burnout, including the potential mediating effects of the coach-athlete relationship and basic psychological needs satisfaction.

Results

(1) Athletes' relationship-maintenance strategies negatively predicted athlete burnout. (2) Besides the direct effect, we found evidence to support three mediation paths: (a) the coach-athlete relationship, (b) basic psychological needs satisfaction, and (c) both as serial mediators.

Discussion

These findings enhance understanding of the mechanism of athlete burnout, demonstrating the influence of factors beyond the coach's role. The study also provides a theoretical basis for practical intervention by coaches, athletes, and sports organizations to reduce athlete burnout by focusing on athletes' perspectives.