Center launches Resilience Facilitator Program

The Center for Flourishing Health Care Communities is committed to discovering creative approaches to foster a culture of resilience and wellbeing within health care education and practice. Aligned with its mission, the center recently piloted a Resilience Facilitator Program developed by Dr. Amit Sood, MD, a world-renowned expert on resiliency solutions. The 12-week course, designed for University leaders, faculty, staff and student leaders, sought to empower participants to improve their focus, emotion regulation, and interpersonal relationships. Participants in the pilot included individuals from the University of Minnesota Rochester and the University of Minnesota School of Nursing.

The Resilience Facilitator Program aims to teach participants how the brain processes emotions and how this knowledge can be applied to reduce stress, improve focus and navigate challenges. A key feature of the program is its focus on sustainability. Participants are trained to teach resilience principles to others, ensuring long-term impact. Quantitative and qualitative data collected from participants revealed impressive results. Pre/post assessments indicated improvements in resilience, stress and burnout scores. Participants also reported enhanced interpersonal relationships and a stronger sense of flourishing.

The program’s evaluation showed high satisfaction, with participants recommending its expansion to include a wider audience of faculty, staff and students. The qualitative feedback highlighted how easy it was to incorporate the principles into daily routines, yielding benefits both personally and for others they shared the training with. One participant noted, “With as much as these skills have helped me, if there’s a particular situation where I believe one of these skills could help, it would be a disservice not to pass along my knowledge.”

Building on this success, discussions are underway to expand the program to broader college and university communities, further embedding resilience and wellbeing into the fabric of health care education and practice.

The Center for Flourishing Health Care Communities is sponsored by the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and University of Minnesota Rochester, in collaboration with Mayo Clinic and the Center for Nursing Equity and Excellence.