Medical students' resilience level and its associated factors: A Tunisian study

Resilience is one's ability to adapt to internal and external stressors and cope with challenges encountered throughout life.

Our work aimed to determine resilience levels at the Medical University of Ibn El Jazzar-Sousse (Faculty of Medicine of Sousse) Tunisia and to identify the key factors influencing resilience in order to help students improve their college experience, as well as their future career and eventually their quality of life.

It's a cross-sectional study conducted during October and November 2021 at the FMS including all undergraduate medical students using a questionnaire elaborated in French language and composed of 02 major parts Socio-demographic and general health data and The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Data were collected using Google Forms platform via social networks (Facebook students' groups).

A total of 225 participants filled the questionnaire; the mean age was 21±5 years. Among them 75.1% were females (sex ratio=0.33). The total resilience mean score was 56.36±12.43. Comparison of resilience scores according to different covariates showed that resilience was positively associated with male gender, extracurricular activities, relationships with both colleagues and teachers and physical exercise, but negatively associated with imposed course of study and perception of both study difficulties and personal academic results. No correlation was found between resilience score and age.

This work encourages university administrators to devote more resources to promote resilience, and it emphasizes the importance of implementing new educational and entertaining interventions to improve students' ability to deal with academic challenges.