{"title":"On the correlation between gratitude and resilience in medical students.","authors":"Nicolai Hahn, Patrick Brzoska, Claudia Kiessling","doi":"10.3205/zma001663","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objective: </strong>Medical students' health and resilience have increasingly been the subject of current research in recent years. A variety of interventions are recommended to strengthen resilience or its known or suspected influencing factors, although the literature shows that the evidence on the effectiveness of the interventions is inconsistent. The present study investigated whether gratitude is a direct protective factor for resilience in medical students or whether resilience factors (optimism, self-efficacy, social support) and stress mediate the effects of gratitude on resilience.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>90 medical students at Witten/Herdecke University took part in the study that determined their gratitude, resilience, optimism, self-efficacy, social support and stress levels using validated questionnaires (GQ-6, RS-25, LOT-R, SWE, F-SozU, PSS). Correlations were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficients. In addition, a multivariate regression analysis and a path analysis were calculated to determine the direct and indirect effects of gratitude on resilience.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Multivariate regression analysis showed that only optimism, social support and stress were significantly associated with resilience (B=0.48, 95% CI: 0.31, 0.66; B=0.23, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.44 and B=-0.02, 95% CI: -0.03, -0.001, respectively). The direct effect of gratitude on resilience was minimal and not significant in the path analysis. However, there was an indirect effect of gratitude on resilience (B=0.321; p<0.05). Mediation via the optimism variable was mainly responsible for this effect (indirect effect B=0.197; p<0.05).</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>This study shows that gratitude has only a minimal direct influence on resilience. However, results indicate that optimism as a mediating factor strengthens the resilience of medical students. Against this background, it may be useful to integrate interventions that promote an optimistic attitude into medical studies in order to strengthen the mental health of future doctors in the long term.</p>","PeriodicalId":45850,"journal":{"name":"GMS Journal for Medical Education","volume":"41 1","pages":"Doc8"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10946207/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"GMS Journal for Medical Education","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3205/zma001663","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION, SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Objective: Medical students' health and resilience have increasingly been the subject of current research in recent years. A variety of interventions are recommended to strengthen resilience or its known or suspected influencing factors, although the literature shows that the evidence on the effectiveness of the interventions is inconsistent. The present study investigated whether gratitude is a direct protective factor for resilience in medical students or whether resilience factors (optimism, self-efficacy, social support) and stress mediate the effects of gratitude on resilience.
Methods: 90 medical students at Witten/Herdecke University took part in the study that determined their gratitude, resilience, optimism, self-efficacy, social support and stress levels using validated questionnaires (GQ-6, RS-25, LOT-R, SWE, F-SozU, PSS). Correlations were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficients. In addition, a multivariate regression analysis and a path analysis were calculated to determine the direct and indirect effects of gratitude on resilience.
Results: Multivariate regression analysis showed that only optimism, social support and stress were significantly associated with resilience (B=0.48, 95% CI: 0.31, 0.66; B=0.23, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.44 and B=-0.02, 95% CI: -0.03, -0.001, respectively). The direct effect of gratitude on resilience was minimal and not significant in the path analysis. However, there was an indirect effect of gratitude on resilience (B=0.321; p<0.05). Mediation via the optimism variable was mainly responsible for this effect (indirect effect B=0.197; p<0.05).
Conclusion: This study shows that gratitude has only a minimal direct influence on resilience. However, results indicate that optimism as a mediating factor strengthens the resilience of medical students. Against this background, it may be useful to integrate interventions that promote an optimistic attitude into medical studies in order to strengthen the mental health of future doctors in the long term.
期刊介绍:
GMS Journal for Medical Education (GMS J Med Educ) – formerly GMS Zeitschrift für Medizinische Ausbildung – publishes scientific articles on all aspects of undergraduate and graduate education in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy and other health professions. Research and review articles, project reports, short communications as well as discussion papers and comments may be submitted. There is a special focus on empirical studies which are methodologically sound and lead to results that are relevant beyond the respective institution, profession or country. Please feel free to submit qualitative as well as quantitative studies. We especially welcome submissions by students. It is the mission of GMS Journal for Medical Education to contribute to furthering scientific knowledge in the German-speaking countries as well as internationally and thus to foster the improvement of teaching and learning and to build an evidence base for undergraduate and graduate education. To this end, the journal has set up an editorial board with international experts. All manuscripts submitted are subjected to a clearly structured peer review process. All articles are published bilingually in English and German and are available with unrestricted open access. Thus, GMS Journal for Medical Education is available to a broad international readership. GMS Journal for Medical Education is published as an unrestricted open access journal with at least four issues per year. In addition, special issues on current topics in medical education research are also published. Until 2015 the journal was published under its German name GMS Zeitschrift für Medizinische Ausbildung. By changing its name to GMS Journal for Medical Education, we wish to underline our international mission.