The team resilience prescription: Navigating adaptive and maladaptive processes in healthcare teams

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world turned its attention to healthcare professionals: everyone's lifeline. Yet, in doing so, patterns of overwork and exhaustion of those professionals were fortified, resulting in some of the highest burnout rates the field has ever seen. The picture becomes increasingly complex as most healthcare professionals work in teams, and resilient individuals do not necessarily make resilient teams. As many healthcare professionals are taught to keep going – no matter what the obstacles are – resilience ensues, but at what cost? This discussion article argues that team resilience comes in two forms: adaptive and maladaptive. We discuss how teams' exchange patterns can result in negative cycles of performance, resulting in harm to the self, one's team, and others (such as patients). We follow this discussion up by putting forward three pillars of adaptive team resilience grounded in job burnout's facets, integrating literature on sense of calling, emotional contagion, and team adaptability. Moreover, we consider the pivotal role of the healthcare hierarchy in these processes, and how individuals of differential rank can approach these pillars. We end with a brief discussion on how to incorporate these pillars into organizational practices.