Resilience: Conceptualisations and curricular approaches of medical educators

Abstract

Background: Concern has mounted about the high rates of psychological distress among learners, resulting in calls to cultivate resilience across the medical education continuum. Educators are strategically positioned to foster resilience in their learners through the formal, informal, and hidden curricula. However, little empirical research has explored resilience in medical educators. Key questions such as how do they conceptualise resilience, and how do they support resilience in learners are particularly relevant. Summary of Work: This research was part of a larger mixed-methods study examining resilience in medical educators. Open-ended questions exploring: (i) how educators conceptualised resilience, and (ii) how they were fostering resilience in their learners, were woven throughout a cross-sectional online questionnaire. Sociodemographic characteristics were also collected. UK-based educators involved in teaching medical students, trainees or doctors were invited to participate, and their anonymised responses were analysed using thematic framework analysis. Summary of Results: 244 medical educators participated. The pattern across identified themes suggested that they predominantly conceptualised resilience as an individual process, rather than a more holistic perspective encompassing institutional, community, societal, and cultural dimensions. Approaches spanning the formal and informal curricula were mainly reported by participants to support resilience in their learners. In contrast, the hidden curriculum was seldom mentioned. Discussion and Conclusions: Medical educators may conceptualise resilience in a way that differs from recent literature which views resilience through a multi-dimensional lens. Furthermore, the data suggests that their approaches to fostering learner resilience may potentially be neglecting the hidden curriculum or the structural and cultural aspects of medical education. Take-home Messages: Educators play an important role in cultivating learner resilience throughout the medical education continuum and exploring how this occurs is a valuable area for further research. Faculty development initiatives should challenge educators to conceptualise resilience holistically as this may influence how they foster resilience in their learners. Curricular approaches that explicitly address the hidden curriculum should also be considered.