Medical Students' Perceptions and Retention of Skills From Active Resilience Training

Medical students face difficult transitions throughout their training that increase their risk of burnout. Resiliency training may prepare students to better face the demands of their medical careers. This project is an initial investigation into medical students' long-term utilization of learned resiliency skills.

Medical students completed a survey 1-18 months following Active Resilience Training (ART). The computerized survey assessed the program's success in meeting its stated objectives and how often students used the skills they had learned during the training.

ART is highly effective in increasing awareness of the benefits of resiliency training. The majority of participants would recommend the course to their peers. Students continued to utilize the skills learned for more than 18 months after completing the training. These skills include planned breaks, prioritizing sleep, building support systems, and mindfulness techniques.

This work adds to the existing literature regarding participants' valuation of novel resilience curricula. Students utilized the skills learned in ART as long as 18 months after completing the program. More study evaluating the specific effects of ART on traditional measures of resilience such as the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) is needed.