This course (S1 Appendix ) consists of 6 hours of instruction on building skills for resilience during the first clinical year of the MBBS (i.e., Year 4). In the respective year, the students are rotating in clinical placements for four days a week and are attending classes on campus once a week (labelled as “MBRU Day”). During the “MBRU Day”, students are offered structured, curricular training across various longitudinal themes, including but not limited to the resilience skills building course. The overall objective of this course is to raise awareness about the challenge of stress in the medical students’ trajectory and the clinical workplace, and to provide tools for understanding, developing, and deploying resilience skills. By the end of the course, the students are expected to be able to:
The course is designed in a way that inspires and empowers adult learners [28 ] who are assumed to be self-directed and are intrinsically motivated [27 (link)]. The postulation is that these learners tend to exercise analogical reasoning in learning and practice. They have gone through diverse learning experiences in basic and clinical sciences. As such, these learners have retained a substantial knowledge base which constitute an increasing resource for learning, and forms mental models which drive their attitudes and behaviours. Through the course and their engagement with the course content, based on the constructivism theory of experiential education [24 ], the students are encouraged to identify gaps in their own mental models and to adapt them based on their active participation in learning experiences. In alignment with Kolb’s experiential learning theory, reflection and reflexivity are fostered through the supervision of and continuous flow of feedback from skilled mentors, who are experts in the subject matter [23 , 27 (link)]. Moreover, students are asked to maintain a daily journal of reflections, where they document what surfaces for them during the session. Also, at the end of each session, the students are asked through an online survey to pinpoint one or two main take-home messages as well as the actions they intend to take to proactively build their resilience. As such, in between the weekly course sessions, the learners get to actively experiment with the application of the acquired knowledge and skills.
This (pass or fail) longitudinal course has three student performance assessment components: attendance requirement, Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), and reflective essays. Enrolled students are expected to attend all the course classes. Students who miss more than 20% of the class sessions are automatically dropped-out from the course. Students are required to come on time to each session. The OSCE component of this course is factored into the end of the academic year assessment, where students are practically tested (through simulations) on various skills including those related to resilience. As for the essay, the students are required to submit a 500 words essay reflecting on their learning experience as part of this course.
The course is designed in a way that inspires and empowers adult learners [28 ] who are assumed to be self-directed and are intrinsically motivated [27 (link)]. The postulation is that these learners tend to exercise analogical reasoning in learning and practice. They have gone through diverse learning experiences in basic and clinical sciences. As such, these learners have retained a substantial knowledge base which constitute an increasing resource for learning, and forms mental models which drive their attitudes and behaviours. Through the course and their engagement with the course content, based on the constructivism theory of experiential education [24 ], the students are encouraged to identify gaps in their own mental models and to adapt them based on their active participation in learning experiences. In alignment with Kolb’s experiential learning theory, reflection and reflexivity are fostered through the supervision of and continuous flow of feedback from skilled mentors, who are experts in the subject matter [23 , 27 (link)]. Moreover, students are asked to maintain a daily journal of reflections, where they document what surfaces for them during the session. Also, at the end of each session, the students are asked through an online survey to pinpoint one or two main take-home messages as well as the actions they intend to take to proactively build their resilience. As such, in between the weekly course sessions, the learners get to actively experiment with the application of the acquired knowledge and skills.
This (pass or fail) longitudinal course has three student performance assessment components: attendance requirement, Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), and reflective essays. Enrolled students are expected to attend all the course classes. Students who miss more than 20% of the class sessions are automatically dropped-out from the course. Students are required to come on time to each session. The OSCE component of this course is factored into the end of the academic year assessment, where students are practically tested (through simulations) on various skills including those related to resilience. As for the essay, the students are required to submit a 500 words essay reflecting on their learning experience as part of this course.
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