The importance of Resilience to Primary Care Practitioners: an Interactive Psycho-Social Model

In this paper, it is argued that an understanding of the factors that make up resilience canenhance communication and concordance between practitioner and patient. A model ispresented demonstrating that resilience is an interaction between factors in the internaldomain, comprising psychological characteristics and resources, and the external domain,comprising the social environment surrounding the individual. As resilience manifests itselfin different ways across the life-cycle, and according to individual circumstances, time is alsoan important part of the model presented in this paper. Understanding this model of resiliencecan lead to an insight that there are factors that can be influenced whereby the primary carepractitioner can treat the patient, or refer them after a process of concordance through adeeper understanding of the factors that surround a patient’s current health status. Underlyingthe model is the view that resilience is linked to the assets model of health, seeking topromote and maintain health and prevent illness. Therefore, primary care practitioners,through a deeper understanding of the circumstances of the patient, and throughunderstanding the factors that promote resilience, may be better able to take action in healthpromotion and maintenance.