What do we know about student resilience in health professional education? A scoping review of the literature

• Published in: Nurse education today 2017-11, Vol.58, p.65-71
• Main Authors: Sanderson, Brooke, Brewer, Margo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Allied health; Conceptual models; Coping; Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate - methods; Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate - standards; Health education; Health Occupations; Health professionals; Humans; Literature reviews; Medical personnel; Medicine; Nursing; Nursing education; Professional Education; Professional Training; Resilience; Resilience, Psychological; Scoping review; Students, Nursing - psychology; University students; Work environment
• ISSN: 0260-6917; 1532-2793
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nedt.2017.07.018

Resilience has been identified as a key capability to thrive in the complex changing work environment of the 21st century. Therefore, the aim of this scoping review was to investigate how resilience is understood in the context of pre-qualifying health education, if there is a need to build student resilience, and what approaches to enhancing student resilience are described in the literature. Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) literature scoping review design was adopted as it enables researchers to review, summarise and analyse the literature on a given topic. The databases searched were Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Scopus, Proquest, Medline, Science Direct, and Education Resources Information Centre. Four research questions informed the literature review: (1) how is resilience conceptualised in the literature?, (2) what evidence exists for the need for resilience enhancement?, (3) what resilience factors should inform resilience enhancement?, and (4) what resilience enhancement programs are described in the literature? A total of 36 papers were reviewed in detail. Whilst the need for a focus on resilience across the health professions was evident an array of definitions and conceptualisations of resilience were described. A small number of approaches to enhancing resilience were identified. Whilst widespread recognition of the importance of resilience in the health professions exists the area remains under theorised with limited conceptual models and robust interventions published to date. •Despite growing interest in resilience in health professions, no commonly accepted definition of resilience was evident in the papers reviewed•A definition of resilience relevant to pre-qualification health professional education is proposed•Resilience factors that students can draw on to achieve the desired outcome of surviving and thriving are identified•Interventions to enhance resilience in health education students exist in many forms•Most interventions focus on individuals, but organisation wide change is also required to embed resilience within health curricula