We seem to be making a habit of launching our books at the Royal College of Nursing annual research conference. This year we launched Critical Resilience for Nurses: an evidence-based guide to survival and change in the modern NHS, by Michael Traynor and published by Routledge. Its available from the publisher’s website here.

Photograph courtesy of Mike O’Driscoll

The argument of the book is that often the promotion of resilience perpetuates an individualising drive in contemporary politics. To urge nurses to go on resilience-building courses can amount to a refusal to engage in actions aimed at bringing about changes to the structures that create much of the need for resilience in the first place. The promoters of resilience among nurses often fail to distinguish between the difficulties of nursing work that are due to the nature of the job – dealing closely with the sick and dying and those that are a result of government or managerial policies, making the job more difficult than it need be. The book sets out an alternative – critical resilience – which is about joining together with colleagues and companions to understand the political forces that are lying behind day to day experience. It is about critique rather than complaint.

I (MT) have great ambitions for this book. My heart is in it and I hope many people read it and are affected by it.