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Objective: Research has consistently shown that medical students have greater rates of stress and mental-ill health in comparison with non-medical students. The objective of this study was to investigate the resilience strategies employed by medical students in an Irish medical school to inoculate themselves against the deleterious effects of stress on health and wellbeing., Methods: Group concept mapping was utilized incorporating qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The stages undertaken by year 3 students at an Irish medical school involved brainstorming/idea generation, categorization, and rating of resilience strategies students employed to manage stress during medical school. The data was analyzed utilizing The Concept System® software through multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering., Results: Categories of resilience strategies employed included "friends and family," "de-stress through exercise/sport," "extra-curricular non-medical activities," "self-enabled distraction," "organization," and "enhancing emotional and mental wellbeing." Students rated spending time with "friends and family" to be most effective when seeking to relieve stress, whereas students rated "de-stressing through exercise/sport" as being of greatest importance in relation to inclusion in a resilience-based intervention. Students recognized the value of incorporating strategies to enhance emotional and mental wellbeing into a resilience-promoting program. "Self-enabled distraction" rated poorly on both scales., Conclusions: Strategies rated by students to be important to incorporate in a stress reduction management program are accessible, are feasible, and can be implemented into the medical curriculum.

This paper describes the development and psychometric properties of the Curtin Vicarious Response Scales (CVRS), a research tool specifically developed to evaluate emotional reponsivity in clinical practice and in undergraduate training. The measure yields scores on three substantive scales, (I) Perspective Taking, the capacity to shift perspectives and to step outside of self when dealing with other people, (II) Empathy, the ability to understand another?s mental and emotional states and (III) Emotional Lability, affective sensitivity and changeability. The construct validity of the CVRS is unequivocal and concurrent validation demonstrates its expected place within personality space. The psychometric properties of the device demonstrate its viability as a research tool in the area of Empathy and Emotional Responsivity., (© 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.)

Objectives: It is well recognised that medical training can be extremely stressful and that high stress is a risk factor for a wide range of psychological and health-related consequences. The primary aims of this study were to introduce the Medical Student Stress Profile (MSSP) and to demonstrate its psychometric quality as a specific device for auditing medical student stress. Secondary aims were to establish the reliability, construct and criterion validity of this instrument and to explore the relationships between stress, coping, personality, motivation and emotional intelligence in medical students., Methods: A battery of self-report measures including the MSSP was administered to a sample of 239 undergraduate and graduate-entry medical students. The battery included indices of stress, coping with and proneness to stress, as well as measures of emotional intelligence, motivation style, personality traits, educational environment perception and self-reported symptomatology. Psychometric evaluation of the MSSP was conducted along with a correlation analysis of stress concomitants., Results: The MSSP revealed good psychometric properties and showed a substantial stress load in the participant sample. The pattern of correlations with concomitant measures conformed generally to expectations. Strong cohort effects were observed, which suggest the importance of future investigation into the role of the group in stress amelioration. Stress adversely affects ratings of the educational environment as measured by the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure., Conclusions: The MSSP was specifically developed for the medical training context and may have utility for individual and group stress audits of medical students and as a device to inform remedial programmes in stress management in medical education., (© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2010.)