I can understand - I think - what Dr Oliver is getting at in his piece.
A bow fits better, here, than a branch. When you bend a bow (stress it externally: too many patients, too few clinicians, not enough beds, etc) one side of the bow is stretched and the other side is compressed, and any particular bow (a doctor) is 'resilient' up to a limit beyond which it breaks. You can build resilience into a bow - modern composite bows are more resilient than a bow carved from a single piece of wood - but if you bend any bow too far, it will break.
As I understand it, Dr Oliver is simply saying that doctors can be helped to be more resilient individually, but we must never forget that however much we can improve the resilience of individual doctors (and nurses), if they are 'bent too far by the system they will break': and that breakdown must be laid at the door of 'the system they are working in' and not heaped on the shoulders of 'inadequately-resilient doctors' - however much various people might wish to 'spin' this away from systemic failures, to failures of individual clinicians within the system.
Rapid Response:
Branches bend and either bounce back or snap
I can understand - I think - what Dr Oliver is getting at in his piece.
A bow fits better, here, than a branch. When you bend a bow (stress it externally: too many patients, too few clinicians, not enough beds, etc) one side of the bow is stretched and the other side is compressed, and any particular bow (a doctor) is 'resilient' up to a limit beyond which it breaks. You can build resilience into a bow - modern composite bows are more resilient than a bow carved from a single piece of wood - but if you bend any bow too far, it will break.
As I understand it, Dr Oliver is simply saying that doctors can be helped to be more resilient individually, but we must never forget that however much we can improve the resilience of individual doctors (and nurses), if they are 'bent too far by the system they will break': and that breakdown must be laid at the door of 'the system they are working in' and not heaped on the shoulders of 'inadequately-resilient doctors' - however much various people might wish to 'spin' this away from systemic failures, to failures of individual clinicians within the system.
Competing interests: No competing interests