‘Being a work family’

Resilience in cancer centres

June 2 2021

Congratulations to Gemma Aburn for earning her PhD in this critical area.

Gemma’s thesis is titled Being a Work Family – A constructivist grounded theory study exploring staff experiences of working in children’s blood and cancer centres in Aotearoa. The aim of the study was to construct a theory to explain staff experiences of working in children’s blood and cancer centres in Aotearoa, with a particular focus on how staff maintain resilience in their work. Gemma’s research highlighted that while children’s blood and cancer centres remain a challenging environment to work in, staff are able to maintain resilience in their work through being a collective – being a work family. Her supervisors were Merryn Gott and Karen Hoare.

To learn more, have a read of the publications that form the basis of her thesis:

What is resilience? An Integrative Review of the empirical literature. To use systematic methods to examine how resilience is defined in empirical research.

“We are all a family” Staff Experiences of Working in Children’s Blood and Cancer Centers in New Zealand—A Constructivist Grounded Theory An exploration of staff experiences working in a children’s blood and cancer center in New Zealand, with a particular focus on how staff maintain resilience and carry on working in this difficult area.

Connecting theory with practice: Time to explore social reality and rethink resilience among health professionals To discuss and contrast different theoretical perspectives of resilience and explore the value these bring to understanding health professional well-being.

Reflecting on a journey of resilience in children’s blood and cancer nursing An exploration of Gemma’s experiences of being a children’s oncology nurse and paediatric palliative care nurse specialist in the context of existing empirical and theoretical literature, with a particular focus on how she developed resilience.