Abstract
BackgroundResilience refers to the ability to be flexible and adaptive in response to challenges. Medical students in clerkship who are transitioning from medical studies to clinical practice face a variety of workplace demands that can lead to negative learning experiences and poor quality of life. This study explored whether medical students’ resilience plays a protective role against the stresses incurred during workplace training and on their professional quality of life during clerkships.MethodsThis was a 1-year prospective web-based questionnaire study comprising one cohort of medical students in their fifth year who were working as clerks as part of their 6-year medical education programme at one medical school in Taiwan between September 2017 and July 2018. Web-based, validated, structured, self-administered questionnaires were used to measure the students’ resilience at the beginning of the clerkship and their perceived training stress (i.e. physical and psychological demands) and professional quality of life (i.e. burnout and compassion satisfaction) at each specialty rotation. Ninety-three medical students who responded to our specialty rotation surveys at least three times in the clerkship were included and hierarchical regressions were performed.ResultsThis study verified the negative effects of medical students’ perceived training stress on burnout and compassion satisfaction. However, although the buffering (protective) effects of resilience were observed for physical demands (one key risk factor related to medical students’ professional quality of life), this was not the case for psychological demands (another key risk factor). In addition, through the changes in R square (∆R2) values of the hierarchical regression building, our study found that medical students’ perceived training stresses played a critical role on explaining their burnout but their resilience on their compassion satisfaction.ConclusionsMedical students’ resilience demonstrated a buffering effect on the negative relationship between physical demands and professional quality of life during clerkships. Moreover, different mechanisms (predictive paths) leading to medical students’ professional quality of life such as burnout and compassion satisfaction warrant additional studies.
Highlights
Resilience refers to the ability to be flexible and adaptive in response to challenges
Resilience is viewed as a way for individuals to manage stress, survive competently, and engage in learning despite mental pressures [18], our study explored whether medical students’ resilience could play a protective role in workplace training stress and professional quality of life during clerkships
A review of the medical students’ 1073 responses to the individual specialty rotation surveys revealed that on average, the training stress perceived by the medical students was 2.696 (SD = 0.883) for psychological demands and 1.810 (SD = 0.819) for physical demands, whereas the average perceived professional quality of life was 2.346 (SD = 0.613) for burnout and 3.505 (SD = 0.815) for compassion satisfaction
Summary
Resilience refers to the ability to be flexible and adaptive in response to challenges. Medical students in clerkship who are transitioning from medical studies to clinical practice face a variety of workplace demands that can lead to negative learning experiences and poor quality of life. Resilience refers to the ability of people to ‘bounce back’ when they encounter difficulties [1] These difficulties can range from adversities to traumas, tragedies, and threats; these can even be significant sources of stress, such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stresses [2]. Studies have revealed that medical students can encounter stressful clinical events [14] and psychological and physical demands [15, 16] during their clinical training years. Another study indicated that medical students should be equipped with medical knowledge and an awareness of how to properly care for themselves [13]
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