Resilience, stress, and coping among Canadian medical students

Abstract

Background: Numerous studies have established that medical school is a stressful place but coping styles and resilience have not been adequately addressed as protective factors.Method: Using a cross-sectional design, 155 students were surveyed using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, and the Canadian Community Health Survey Coping Scale. Mean scores were compared by gender and between our sample and normative scores using t-tests. Multivariate linear regression was performed to examine whether stress levels were related to coping and resilience.Results: Medical students had higher perceived stress, negative coping, and lower resilience than age and gender-matched peers in the general population. Male medical students had higher positive coping scores than general population peers and higher resilience, and lower perceived stress than female medical students. Coping scores did not vary by gender in our sample. The multivariate model showed that resilience and negative, but not positive coping, predicted stress.Conclusions: Medical students are neither more resilient nor better equipped with coping skills than peers in the population. Greater emphasis on self-care among medical trainees is recommended. Emphasizing the importance of self-care during medical training, whether by formal incorporation into the curriculum or informal mentorship, deserves further study.

Resilience: a nationwide study of medical educators

“…This extends the literature which has found a negative relationship between resilience and depression symptoms in other populations including healthcare professionals (Rossouw et al, 2013;Hegney et al, 2015;Shi et al, 2016). Further, these findings add to the evidence base of negative associations determined between resilience, and other facets of psychological distress such as burnout (Cooke, Doust and Steele, 2013), stress (Rahimi et al, 2014), as well as mental health problems (Peng et al, 2012) reported in the wider medical education literature.…”

“…Among medical learners and practitioners, alarming rates of psychological distress have garnered attention in recent years (Dyrbye, Thomas and Shanafelt, 2006;Shanafelt et al, 2011;Dyrbye et al, 2014;Hope and Henderson, 2014; In the broader medical education literature, a number of studies have investigated factors relating to resilience. Several have identified negative associations between resilience and facets of distress such as depression (Shi et al, 2016), burnout (Cooke, Doust and Steele, 2013), stress (Rahimi et al, 2014), and general mental health problems (Peng et al, 2012). However, we are not aware of any studies exploring facets of distress, such as depression, in relation to resilience in medical educators specifically.…”

“…When considering the relationship between resilience and sociodemographic variables, inconsistencies have been reported (Davidson and Connor, 2015). For example, research involving Chinese (Peng et al, 2012), Canadian (Rahimi et al, 2014), and U.S. (Houpy et al, 2017) medical students found male students as having statistically higher resilience scores than females. Whereas, Elizondo-Omaña et al (2010) did not observe such differences in resilience scores by gender in Mexican medical students.…”

Factores de Resiliencia y Afrontamiento como Predictores del Rendimiento Académico de los Estudiantes en Universidades Privadas

“…No obstante, hay afrontamientos negativos como le autofocalización negativa y estilo evitativo que, si no son adecuadamente gestionados por el estudiante, pueden generar mayores respuestas fisiológicas negativas, pérdida de la homeostasis e interferencia en la capacidad percibida de ajuste ante situaciones conflictivas. Además, de deterioro en la capacidad física y mental (Campos et al, 2004;Rahimi et al, 2014).…”

“…En cuanto a los estilos de relaciones familiares, un patrón relacional ayuda significativamente en el ajuste personal social y en la toda acción académica (Campos et al, 2004;Rahimi et al,. 2014).…”