Analyses of self-care agency and mindset: pilot study on Malaysian undergraduate medical students

Introduction: Self-care agency, a core concept that helps alleviate the stressors of medical training, is postulated to be practiced by medical students who exhibit a growth mindset. Hence, this pilot study was designed to measure, compare, and correlate the self-care agency and mindsets of undergraduate medical students to assess the potential for scaling to a national survey. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at one public and one private medical university using a revised version of the Appraisal of Self-Care Agency Scale to measure self-care agency and the Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale to measure participants’ mindset. Data was analysed using IBM SPSS. Results: In total, 329 complete responses were obtained. Among the self-care domains, a higher capacity for self-care and a developing capacity for self-care, with a lower ability to indulge in self-care, were reported. Self-care agency showed a significant difference between pre-clinical and clinical students (p = .027; Cohen’s d = .2). Mindset measurements revealed a higher growth than a fixed mindset. The Pearson correlation coefficient showed a weak positive correlation, (r = 0.19) between the means of self-care agency and a growth mindset. Clinical students showed a higher tendency toward self-care than their pre-clinical counterparts in an independent-samples t-test, with no differences between genders and universities. Conclusion: This pilot study found a positive correlation between self-care agency and growth mindset among undergraduate medical students. Although limited by two prototype universities and response bias, this study provides a solid foundation for future nationwide or cross-country studies.