Can simulation foster resilience in medical students?

Resilience is considered to be ‘a mindset and skill set that can be nurtured into a stronger and more effective attribute’.1 Whether and how it can be nurtured in medical students is a subject of interest for medical educators.1 2 Little is known about how physicians develop resilience.3 While some interventions show promise,4 resilience training in medical education is not well studied. We aimed to develop a teaching intervention with high acceptability to undergraduate medical students, which would allow exposure to challenges in a controlled, psychologically safe environment, and might enhance their resilience. Simulation- based education provided opportunities for carefully designed scenarios and debriefing by trained facilitators. Structured debriefing enabled participants to recognise and discuss stressful situations, as well as increase their connection with each other and with their teachers. These factors have been found to enhance resilience in other contexts.5 Participants’ impressions were explored qualitatively, and suggest that simulation can encourage reflection on the non- technical skill of resilience, provided there is careful design and debriefing of the simulation activity.