A Primer in Resilience Status for German Medical Graduates - A Necessary Step in Building an Emotionally Equipped Healthcare Workforce
Abstract BackgroundResilience is a widely-used catchword in the last couple of years to describe the resistance to psychological strains of life, especially for the healthcare work force. The promises of resilience to burnout sound great and what we all would want: less health impairment despite stress, higher work satisfaction and last but not least higher work performance. However, little is known scientifically regarding the resilience status of the upcoming work-force. With our study we would like to investigate the resilience status of medical graduates from five medical schools within their first year after graduation. MethodsFor the identification of the resilience status we included the 5-point Likert 10-Item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, German Version in a graduate survey posted to 5 medical schools and over 1610 eligible participants of whom 610 (60% female) filled out at least parts of the survey. ResultsThe resilience status showed a mean resilience score of M = 37.1 (SD = 6.30). The score ranges from 3.22 (I am not easily discouraged by failure) to 4.26 (I am able to adapt to change). The item “I am able to handle unpleasant feeling” is interesting as one third of the participants did choose not to answer. Relationships to other constructs are presented in the article. ConclusionsThe study shows that the overall resilience status of medical graduates one year after their graduation is rather high, but subjectively they do not feel equivalently resilient for the different aspects they face in their job. Further research needs to see how trainings can provide medical students and professionals with the emotional coping skills that they lack in the moment.