Relationship between pharmacy students’ resilience scores and their leadership, work experience and academic performance

Abstract

The goal is to examine if there is a relationship between students’ Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA) Scale scores, demographics, work experience, leadership style, personality types and academic performance. Three cohorts of third-year pharmacy (P3) students completed the RSA and demographic questions. Students’ academic performance, work experience, leadership preferences and demographics were compared. Over 850 students from three cohorts scored on five RSA dimensions – personal competence (4.10 ± 0.58), social competence (3.64 ± 0.75), family coherence (4.18 ± 0.73), social support (4.47 ± 0.59) and personal structure (3.93 ± 0.70) (5 = highest resilience). Social competence and personal structure scores were statistically significantly different from other dimensions. Students with greater work experience, preference for leadership and extroverted personality types had higher scores in social competence and personal structure. Based on this research, it is essential to foster leadership development and encourage work experience to support students in building relationships (social competence) and improving organizational skills (personal structure), since the lowest RSA scores were in these two domains.