[Starting points for resilience promotion in medical education: What keeps future doctors healthy?]

Abstract

A trend towards reduced resilience to stress and impaired psychosocial well-being begins early on in medical education. Our own results confirm the early deterioration of the psychosocial health of medical students observed internationally. Students who simultaneously demonstrate high levels of perfectionism, an insufficient ability to distance themselves from work, as well as a lack of regular physical activity appear to form a special risk group. Therefore, it seems rational to implement interventions that counteract this development by enhancing individual resources and preventing harmful curriculum-associated influences as early as possible during medical education. Interventions should target both individual behaviour and experience patterns of students as well as the setting. The medical curriculum itself was viewed as a priority starting point for resilience-promoting interventions by the students. It should be in the interest of all parties involved to enable all students to stay well during their medical education and to provide them with resources for their work like, e. g. good resilience, which, in turn, will have a sustainable positive effect on the quality of patient care. To date, the evidence base with regard to protective factors for medical students' health and effective resilience-promoting interventions is insufficient in terms of quantity and quality. Moreover, there are only a few meaningful studies that deal specifically with German-speaking areas. Our own studies show that the willingness to participate in resilience-promoting interventions is high in spite of the additional expenditure of time because students consider such interventions to be helpful. Interventions employing the concepts of Mind Body Medicine seem to be especially promising in the context of medical education.