Building resilience equips future pharmacists for lifelong success

The primary aim was to explore pharmacy students' perceptions of resilience, including the value of resilience, their confidence in developing it, and perceived ability to maintain it. This research is intended to inform the effective integration of resilience training into pharmacy education and equip future pharmacists to thrive in increasingly complex healthcare environments.

This approach to teaching resilience included instruction by four instructors at two schools of pharmacy on two different continents. The interactive class session was designed to help students understand the value of resilience, and for them to generate personalized ways to develop resilience at university and later as professionals. A Likert-style survey, administered pre- and post-classroom intervention, assessed three aspects of student beliefs and perceptions related to resilience: how much they value it, their confidence in developing it, and current ability to develop and maintain it. The survey also included open-ended questions to explore students' perceptions of resilience.

Data from 558 pre-survey and 419 post-survey respondents (159 matched pairs) showed improvements (p < .001) across all domains. Confidence showed the largest effect (Cohen's d = 0.62), followed by ability (d = 0.60) and value (d = 0.45). Qualitative analysis revealed shifts toward actionable resilience strategies, with self-care responses increasing from 7.7% to 21.2% post-intervention.

Structured resilience training can be meaningfully integrated into pharmacy curricula, with brief interventions producing improvements in students' confidence, perceived ability, and valuing of resilience development. These findings are particularly relevant given the well-documented stressors inherent to pharmacy education and practice.