The Resilience of Final-Year Pharmacy Students and Aspects of the Course They Found to Be Resilience-Building

Abstract

Background: This work aimed to investigate final year pharmacy students’ resilience (as determined by the CD-RISC-25 tool), whether students considered certain aspects of the course to be resilience-building, and the role of the university in developing this attribute. Methods: Following ethical approval and an invitation to participate, data were collected from consenting students at Queen’s University Belfast via a pre-piloted paper-based questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were performed. To ascertain significant differences (p < 0.05) by gender, the Welch Two Sample t-test was used for the CD-RISC-25 mean scores and the Mann-Whitney U Test and Chi-squared test for Section B data. Results: The response rate was 80.61% (79/98). The mean CD-RISC-25 score for males was higher (not significantly) than the female mean score (70.39 versus 67.18, p = 0.2355, possible score range 0–100). While 93.67% (74/79) considered the School has a responsibility to develop resilience, <20.00% availed of the free resilience building events. Activities deemed to help build resilience included being able to make mistakes in a safe environment and needing to achieve a high grade to pass assessments. Conclusions: Resilience levels among future pharmacists at Queen’s University Belfast should be improved going forward. A strategy, developed in light of conducting this research (from one institution), will now be implemented to enhance the curriculum with regard to resilience building opportunities.

Resilience and empathy in pharmacy interns: Insights from a three-year cohort study

“…Although only a few studies allow for a comparison of CD-RISC scores of pharmacists, it seems that pharmacy interns in this study have a lower resilience score when compared to other pharmacist cohorts who have also been studied using the CD-RISC-25. 42 , 43 For instance, the mean resilience score of pharmacy interns in this study of 66.6 (SD 11.7) was comparatively lower than that of community pharmacists in Lebanon during the COVID-19 pandemic, 42 as well as final year pharmacy students in the UK in 2022. 43 Pharmacy interns showed lower mean resilience scores than final-year nursing students in the USA in 2018, 44 as well as a community group in Australia comprising three different age groups.…”

“… 42 , 43 For instance, the mean resilience score of pharmacy interns in this study of 66.6 (SD 11.7) was comparatively lower than that of community pharmacists in Lebanon during the COVID-19 pandemic, 42 as well as final year pharmacy students in the UK in 2022. 43 Pharmacy interns showed lower mean resilience scores than final-year nursing students in the USA in 2018, 44 as well as a community group in Australia comprising three different age groups. 45 These results indicate that pharmacy interns may benefit from support in developing or strengthening their resilience to manage the demands and challenges of their profession effectively.…”