Is Resilience Enough for Health Professions Students During Clinical Learning?

Resilience-the ability of an individual to respond positively to adversity-is an attribute that has been foregrounded in the health professions education (HPE) literature, yet its conceptualisation and value for health professions students undertaking clinical learning remain contested. Drawing from relevant literature in the field, this viewpoint article describes the concept of resilience in HPE and its role in helping students navigate challenging clinical environments. The various efforts to build student resilience and the question of whether resilience alone is sufficient during clinical learning are posed. The paper concludes with recommendations for complementing resilience initiatives to better prepare students for the complexities of the clinical environment, including developing curricula and training guidelines that explicitly connect resilience practices to clinical skill development, creating psychologically safe learning environments that normalise struggle, integrating aspects of a growth mindset and self-regulated learning across the curriculum, developing policies that protect student well-being by destigmatising mental health issues and promoting faculty development to equip clinical teachers to recognise signs of student distress and to respond appropriately.