Personal resilience for psychiatrists: systematic review

Abstract

Aims and method The concept of personal resilience is relevant to physician well-being, recruitment and retention, and to delivering compassionate patient care. This systematic review aims to explore factors affecting personal resilience among psychiatrists, in particular, those that may impair well-being and those that facilitate resilience practice. A literature search was performed of the Ovid (R), Embase (R), CINAHL and PsycINFO databases, using keywords to identify empirical studies involving psychiatrists that examined resilience, stress and burnout from the past 15 years. Results Thirty-three international English language studies were included, showing that a combination of workplace, personal and non-workplace factors negatively and positively influenced well-being and resilience. Clinical implications Given that workplace factors were the most commonly cited, it would appear that any resilience package that predominantly targets interventions at the workplace level would be particularly fruitful. Future research, however, needs to address the absence of a universal measurement of well-being and its moderators so that any potential interventions are better evaluated.