The reported strategies and attitudes helped to develop mental, physical, and social resource pools that fostered effective decision making. Successful coping, in turn, encouraged the maintenance of resilience-promoting abilities. In relation to Conservation of Resources Theory, physician resilience emerged as the ability to invest personal resources in a way that initiates positive resource spirals in spite of stressful working conditions. Enriching traditional stress management approaches with the dynamic of positive as well as negative resource spirals would thus appear to be a promising approach.

This article presents an account of a comprehensive eighteen-day, multiteam, multidisciplinary training approach to family systems inpatient acute psychiatry. It has been developed and tested as part of the SYMPA project (systems therapy in acute psychiatry), which aims to establish systemic case conceptualizations and interventions as routine practice in acute psychiatry. Content, didactic characteristics and specifications of this training are discussed. To illustrate the practical implementation of the training, specifically designed exercises are described and a clinical case is included. The article concludes by presenting first results of the research on implementation indicating that the training had a significant impact on the quantity and quality of conversations with patients.

What enables physicians to cope efficiently with their every day stressors? Which strategies and attitudes contribute to long term job satisfaction and biopsychosocial health throughout their career? In order to work out the resiliency processes and coping strategies of residents and senior physicians we conducted 200 qualtitative expert interviews. The analysis revealed 30 main categories, referring to 5 subsystems: relating to patients and colleagues, dealing with structural restrictions, maintaining private relations and fields of interests and developing self-awareness. Based on the empirical salutogenetic practices and attitudes we draw conclusions for prevention.