Theses (Master Of Health Professions Education)

BACKGROUND: Resilience is robustly connected with mental well-being. It has been suggested that possessing resilience can expedite recovery from stressful incidents and act as a preventive measure against mental health issues. Notably, students in health professions programmes experience elevated levels of stress and anxiety due to academic workload and other reasons. This study aimed to investigate the contributing factors influencing the resilience and explore effective support systems that universities can implement to assist undergraduate health professions students in fortifying their resilience and managing their mental health. METHODS: The study was conducted using qualitative method. A total of 28 students from the fields of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and nutrition with dietetics participated in semistructured interviews. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interviews were stopped when no new theme emerged. The data were analysed using a thematic analysis approach to explore the contributing factors influencing resilience and identify effective support systems. RESULTS: Thematic analysis following the interviews revealed five key themes: life experience, socioeconomic factors, personal attributes, support resources, and role modelling as the contributing factors to resilience. Universities play a key role in fostering health professions students' resilience through soft skills training workshop, workplace-oriented training, mentoring and extracurricular activities. These opportunities allow students to cultivate and enhance their resilience both within formal curriculum settings and through participation in extracurricular endeavors. CONCLUSION: This study provided a comprehensive understanding of contributing factors of students' resilience. The availability of support resources together with a nurturing environment provided by university are essential for the training of healthcare professionals to be adaptive to the demanding and fast changing landscape of healthcare.

The study explored the practice of self-regulated learning (SRL) by university students in health professions programmes in an international medical university. Undergraduate students recruited from five different programmes took part in Focus Group Discussions. The data collected were analysed thematically following which three major themes were identified. It emerged that students had different goal orientations and had varied expectations from the university and therefore diverse academic orientations. These factors directed the practice of SRL by the students who applied different personalised study techniques for regulating their learning to reach their goals. Their view on success depended on their personal disposition, their goals and was contextual to their pattern of engagement. The 21st century learners were found not leaning heavily on academic pursuits alone but were equally focused on their self-development in terms of soft skills like communication and networking, leadership, problem-solving etc. and to gain a wholesome university experience. The findings of this study highlight the need for universities to meet the futuristic demands of the current students to acquire the qualities required for the future job market.