Project title

PRESST (Performance Resilience Enhancement by Solution and Strengths based Training): Using insights from sport psychology to understand and improve performance-related resilience for doctors.

Country

UK

Background

There are continuing international concerns about maintaining the wellbeing and mental health of doctors and its impact on the quality of patient care and safety. However, there is little evidence of the specific effectiveness of interventions for enhancing the resilience of doctors in maintaining their wellbeing and mental health.

Summary

This is the first project to apply insights from sport psychology talent development to inform the design of an intervention for enhancing the resilience of doctors, with a focus on individual resilience strengths related to professional performance, instead of general personal psychological traits. Participants in elite sports have similar challenges to doctors, and previous research in sport talent development, including a validated questionnaire (PCDEQ), has highlighted seven key factors of performance-related resilience (adverse response to failure, imagery and active preparation, self-directed control and management, perfectionistic tendencies, seeking and using social support, active coping, indicators of reduced coping). Solution-focused and strengths-based training has been highlighted as being effective in multicultural sport talent development.

This project was featured in the December 2023 edition of Casebook, MPS's journal for medical members.  The article can be read here.

Outcome

The project aims to do the following:

  1. Explore the extent that performance-related resilience factors apply to doctors in training
  2. Develop a validated questionnaire based on the PCDEQ for use as a screening tool and for the evaluation of training interventions
  3. Explore the acceptability of a solution and strengths-based training intervention.

In April 2024 the research exploring the extent that performance-related resilience factors apply to doctors was published in Medical Teacher.

The overall intention is to enhance understanding and improve the wellbeing and mental health of doctors, and ultimately improve patient quality of care and safety.