Purpose
The study examines how healthcare professionals’ experiential learning during crisis periods at work unfolds and how it contributes to the building of their resilience. While previous studies analyzed the linkages between learning at work and the resilience of healthcare professionals, we complement these studies by offering insights about experiential learning and its relation to resilience that occurs both on the job – in highly stressful environments – and parallelly outside work, in an intra-professional university setting.
Design/methodology/approach
We analyzed inductively the diary data that captures the lived experiences of healthcare professionals with the aim of grounded theory building. Observing the dynamics among the aggregated dimensions that emerged allowed us to understand the experiential learning process and its relation to resilience.
Findings
The analysis allowed us to generate a theoretical model that depicts how the learning process is characterized by experiential processes at work and outside of work in an intra-professional course setting, acting as an enabler of healthcare professionals' resilience. The model identifies components of the experiential learning process contributing to the development of two types of resilience: adaptive resilience and emotional resilience. Our results further show that these two types of resilience are interconnected rather than separate.
Originality
Our study provides novel insights related to the dynamic relationship of two forms of resilience, and provides evidence into how resilience might be developed in healthcare professionals through an experiential learning process and as a means of dealing with future crises.
Keywords: Resilience, experiential learning, healthcare professionals.
Authors:
- Jasna Pocek
Management and Healthcare Laboratory, Institute of Management Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy - Manuela Furlan
Management and Healthcare Laboratory, Institute of Management Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy
