Why leaders are key for improving resilience and mental wellbeing in healthcare

Resilience and mental well-being are on the agenda as never before [1, 2]. Resilience in healthcare can be understood as the capacity to adapt to challenges and changes at different system levels to maintain high-quality care [3]. Organizational resilience is about handling disturbances, adapting to new realities, and sustaining functions in times of crisis and in normal operation. At the individual level, resilience and mental well-being relate to enabling people to realize their abilities, cope with normal stresses of life, work productively and fruitfully, and make contributions to their communities [4]. Due to increasing healthcare needs, aging populations, and lack of healthcare professionals, the demands for services are higher than available capacity in many healthcare systems. These challenges have escalated even more in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, resulting in burnout, stress, reduced mental well-being for staff, and increased patient safety risk [1, 5]. Calls have been posted for more “holistic” approaches to handle these challenges [5, 6], but what that means in practice is more vaguely described, and so are successful interventions and what leaders could do to support staff [2, 6].