Indonesian medical students’ strategies to strengthen resilience: Among self, others, and faith

Introduction: Limited resources have caused many challenges in health care. Health workers faced dilemmas that potentially cause burnout. Medical students must be strengthened with resilience when facing dilemmas. This study aimed to investigate Indonesian students’ strategies for strengthening resilience after participating in a bioethics workshop based on reflective and collaborative principles. Methods: A bioethics workshop based on reflective and collaborative principles without didactic elements was conducted with 30 medical students. We collected quantitative data from the Adapted Version of the Adult Personal Resilience Questionnaire and qualitative data from the students’ reflections on strategies to strengthen resilience. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were used to analyse the quantitative and qualitative data, respectively. Results: Thirty students participated in the study. The total score of the resilience questionnaire was 4.28 (SD 0.39), indicating that the students perceived themselves as having a moderate-to-high level of resilience for all items. The following four themes from the qualitative analysis were identified: faith, adaptation, self-management, and relationships. Conclusion: Indonesian students’ strategies for strengthening resilience are related to faith, adaptation, self-management, and relationships. Although without a didactic approach, the reflective and collaborative learning in this workshop can raise medical students’ awareness of strategies for building resilience and provided an opportunity for students to reflect on their resilience level. Keywords: Resilience, Reflective Learning, Collaborative Learning, Self-Management, Relationships, Faith, Mixed-Method Approach