Faculty bridging individual and organizational resilience: results of a qualitative analysis

ABSTRACT

Background

Medical student burnout and anxiety has received growing attention in the past decade. The culture of competition and assessment has resulted in increasing stress levels amongst medical students, causing a decline in their academic performance and overall mental health. The objective of this qualitative analysis was to characterize recommendations from educational experts to aid students’ academic progress.

Methods

At an international meeting in 2019, worksheets were completed by medical educators during a panel discussion. Participants responded to four scenarios representing common challenges medical students face in school (eg. Postponing Step 1, failing clerkships, etc.). For each case, participants addressed what students, faculty and medical schools could do to mitigate the challenge. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted by two authors followed by deductive categorization using an individual-organizational resilience model.

Results

Across the four cases, common suggestions made for students, faculty and medical schools were aligned to a resilience model representing the complex interplay between individuals and organizations and the impact on student wellbeing.

Discussion

Using suggestions from medical educators from across the US, we were able to identify recommendations for students, faculty, and medical schools to help students succeed in medical school. By applying a model of resilience, faculty serve as a critical bridge to connect students to the medical school administration. Our findings also support a pass/fail curriculum to ease the competition and burden students place on themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience model
• medical students
• faculty
• medical schools
• academic affairs

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Drs. Christiana Cornea and Beat Steiner for participating in the panel at the 2019 meeting.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by all of the authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ms. Deva and Dr. Beck Dallaghan and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, GLBD, upon reasonable request.

Statements and declarations

Dr. Beck Dallaghan is the executive director for the Alliance for Clinical Education; however, he does not receive financial compensation for this role.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Alliance for Clinical Education .