Abstract :
Medical students are frequently exposed to various stresses resulting in burnout. An effective learned way to cope with stresses and lower the burnout level is resilience. Several factors can influence the resilience level of medical students. This study aimed to recognize the factors related to the resilience level of medical students and to assess the effect of a short-term training course on managing challenges on medical students’ resilience levels. A single-arm pretest-posttest intervention study was conducted among 51 3rd year medical students at the Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Egypt over two months. Higher resilience levels were significantly positively correlated with male students, those who were exposed to psychic trauma in the last year at P-values of 0.03, and 0.02 respectively. Also, Higher resilience levels were significantly positively correlated with students caring for physical health, performing stress reduction practices, and students who were satisfied with their families’, friends’, and teachers’ supports at P-values of 0.03, 0.04, 0.00, 0.00, and 0.00 respectively. The medical students’ satisfaction with their families’, friends’, and teachers’ supports were the only significant independent predictors of higher resilience levels according to multinomial regression analysis results. There was no significant improvement in the mean of the post-intervention students’ resilience total score after the application of the short-term course on managing challenges. There is a need for the short-term managing challenges training course to be elongated and integrated longitudinally across the medical school curriculum and to introduce training courses to cover other areas relieving burnout rather than resilience.
