Building Team Resilience and Debriefing After Difficult Clinical Events: A Resilience Curriculum for Team Leaders

Burnout is prevalent among medical trainees and faculty. Resilience, the ability to cope well with stress and thrive during challenges, has been a focus of initiatives to combat burnout. However, curricula teaching resilience skills are needed. Since residents experience challenging and stressful clinical events often, and would like to discuss these events with their teams, resilience skills may help trainees cope after such events. Additionally, resilience skills may help trainees address other challenges they face as team leaders. Leadership training is an important component of physician professional development.

This advanced resilience training curriculum consists of two interactive workshops that include didactics, skills practice, and reflection. The first workshop focuses on applying resilience skills to team leadership, while the second focuses on structured team debriefing after difficult clinical events. This curriculum is intended for learners who are health care team leaders, such as senior residents, fellows, or faculty. It may be used with learners who have completed introductory resilience training or with those without prior training.

The curriculum was rated highly by senior residents, who reported feeling more comfortable leading their teams after difficult clinical events and talking about these events following this curriculum. The majority of residents thought the workshops should be continued.

This novel curriculum teaches learners to apply resilience skills during team leadership and difficult clinical scenarios. It was well received by senior residents and may be used with a variety of learners across health professions and training levels.