Building Resilience in Medical Students: "Strengthening You to Strengthen Them"

Medical students, like many health professional students, are at risk for burnout and other negative well-being outcomes. Research suggests that building resilience may help to mitigate these risks. A multi-disciplinary team developed, delivered, and evaluated a training on building resilience for medical students entitled, "Resilience for Health Providers - Strengthening You to Strengthen Them." The training program provided parallel learning intended to teach medical students how to apply protective factors to both themselves and their patients. The research team proposed that training medical students to understand mechanisms that support resilience such as motivation and self-efficacy may increase the development of resilience as part of their medical training. Through parallel learning, students can also learn how to apply these mechanisms to their patients. The evaluation of the training's effectiveness consisted of pre- and post-tests. Medical students' resilience was measured using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), a tested and validated scale. Findings indicated that post-test scores increased in each domain from pre-test. Participants reported enhanced skill building for both their own resilience and that of patients after the training. Results from the CD-RISC-10 scale showed that the medical students rated slightly lower than the mean identified by the CD-RISC-10 creators. The results from this initial study to strengthen health professionals' self-reported resilience showed that the training improved medical students' self-reported resilience and their confidence in assisting houseless participants to improve their understanding of building their own self-resilience.