Unveiling how medical educators conceptualise resilience: a qualitative study

Abstract

Background

Medical educators operate in high-pressure environments where resilience is critical to their well-being and professional effectiveness. Studies exploring how medical educators conceptualise resilience is limited, particularly outside Western contexts. As such, research investigating culturally-sensitive conceptualisations of resilience in an Asian context is overdue. This study addresses this gap by exploring how medical educators in Hong Kong (HK) conceptualise resilience, attending to the cultural and professional nuances that shape these understandings.

Method

Twenty medical educators teaching medical students, trainees and/or physicians at HK’s two medical schools were recruited via email using maximum variation sampling. Semi-structured online interviews were conducted in English, audio- and video-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Researchers adopted a constructivist epistemology and employed a socio-ecological model to guide Reflexive Thematic Analysis of the transcripts.

Results

Medical educators predominantly conceptualised resilience as a dynamic process, though some also described it as an outcome of navigating adversity, and to a lesser extent, as an inherent trait. Notably, conceptualisations of resilience as a process and as an outcome often overlapped. Adversity was consistently identified as a fundamental component across definitions. Participants aligned their understandings of resilience closely with their professional roles and pervading sociocultural influences, emphasising relational and cultural dimensions. This holistic approach distinguished their perspectives from more individualised Western notions of resilience.

Conclusions

Traditional Western frameworks of resilience may not adequately capture its complexities in other cultural contexts. Echoing the socio-ecological model, participants’ conceptualisations were deeply intertwined with HK’s cultural values and socio-contextual dynamics. These findings underscore the need to broaden global understandings of resilience beyond Western paradigms. Importantly, our findings can inform the design of culturally-sensitive faculty development programmes aiming to support medical educator resilience in the future.