Resilience of our emerging health professionals: An integrative systematic review

Background/context. Health professional students find the academic experience to be a stressful one, particularly when clinic-based practicums are required in their training, yet resilience research has been undertaken almost exclusively on medical and nursing students with little attention to students training in the allied health professions (Brown et al, 2020; Sanderson & Brewer, 2017; Webber et al., 2021). Understanding resilience may support relevant curricular interventions for this population of students, with a view to facilitating them to emerge into the clinical health workforce as resilient practitioners. The initiative/practice. A systematic review was undertaken to determine what is known about resilience in allied health students. Methods of evaluative data collection and analysis. A protocol was developed to guide the review in which seven databases were searched; two authors were responsible for initial screening according to the developed inclusion and exclusion criteria, with referrals to the third author for mediation when there was disagreement. Evidence of outcomes and effectiveness. Phase one of this integrative systematic review investigated resilience in the broader tertiary student population from 2000 to 2022; 387 abstracts were screened and 124 full-text articles reviewed for inclusion. Findings indicate resilience of tertiary students is of worldwide interest. A range of empirical and non-empirical studies were found as well as proposed theoretical frameworks. Phase two of this integrative systematic review then more specifically explored resilience in allied health students, confirming a paucity of literature in this specific area, warranting further research attention. Full results for phase one and two of this integrative systematic review will be reported in accordance with the PRISMA statement.