Building resilience in oncology teams: Protocol for a realist evaluation of multiple cases

Professional oncology teams are exposed to many situations of adversity [1–4]. Adversity refers to events that are stressful and likely to have a negative effect on health or well-being. The risk to clinicians of mental and physical health problems has been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic [5]. An international study of 1,520 oncology clinicians shows that one quarter are at risk of distress, over a third feel emotionally drained, and two thirds state they can no longer do their work well. Resilience, defined as the capacity to face and recover from situations of adversity, is also identified as one of the main predictors of well-being among clinicians [6]. These results highlight the importance of interventions to support resilience, but also suggest that improving the health and well-being of individual clinicians can help assure the maintenance of oncology services. However, given that teamwork is vital to caring for people living with cancer, resilience must go beyond the individual. Situations of adversity can compromise team functioning [7]. As well, team resilience is more than the sum of the resilience of individual team members [8] and tailored team-level supports are needed. The pandemic context makes it more important than ever to develop and evaluate interventions for building team resilience and produce relevant knowledge that can be used rapidly to minimize the repercussions of adverse situations, including those related to COVID-19 [9].