Beyond bouncing back: exploring undergraduate dental professional students’ perceptions of resilience

Introduction - The first signs of mental health issues in dentistry manifest as early as undergraduate training, thus it is essential to delve into the concept of resilience to equip those studying and working in dentistry with the resources to cultivate a positive mindset.

Materials and Methods - A focus group was conducted with a homogenous purposive sample of eight undergraduate dental profession students from all three years of study at the University of Portsmouth Dental Academy (UPDA). The six-phase Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis was adopted to interpret patterns in data.

Results - Four themes of: “definition of resilience”; “factors enhancing resilience”; “factors challenging resilience”; “developing resilience in dentistry”; and 23 sub-themes were identified. Students defined resilience as an ability to bounce back from adversity and perceived it as a dynamic and contextual phenomenon that fluctuated due to an interplay of personal, social and environmental factors.

Conclusion - The findings of this study showed undergraduate dental profession students’ perceptions of resilience, factors influencing it, and strategies to develop it. These findings may inform the curriculum of resilience training programmes targeted towards this population.