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Burnout. It is a word that has been on the lips of everyone in the academic sphere in recent years. 

The issue has grown more relevant since the coronavirus upended the education system. And for medical, nursing and veterinary students, burnout presents a bigger challenge perhaps than ever before. Indeed, it is a massive obstacle to student learning and quality patient care. 

So how do students cultivate resilience to health care burnout? 

This is what a team of researchers at UC ����ԭ�� has set out to investigate. An interdisciplinary study — led by health professionals across three of ����ԭ��’ professional schools  — seeks to produce resilience training solutions that can create “improvements in well-being, stress and burnout in health care workers.” 

The researchers define resilience as “the process by which individuals bounce back from hardship or adversity.” 

Ryan Gluck, a fourth-year veterinary student at UC ����ԭ��, is one of four students on the study’s committee. He joined the team after Associate Dean Karl Jandrey of the School of Veterinary Medicine invited him to their weekly Zoom calls. 

Since Gluck’s first year at the vet school he has worked with Jandrey — one of six faculty members on the committee — to analyze and consider data. 

“It’s important that we understand what factors into resilience,” Gluck said. “That will carry us through adverse events at work, in our lives, and give us a better understanding of how to protect our mental health in this field.”

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Why does resilience research matter?

According to the UC ����ԭ�� researchers, their study is the first of its kind to focus on resilience across three medical fields: veterinary, nursing and medicine. The 10-member committee devised the study to be longitudinal for the entirety of the educational path for students entering in 2019; it ends with graduation of the class of 2023.  

The research being conducted at UC ����ԭ�� — one of the few universities in California with all three health professional schools — allows for comparisons between the three schools, and, Gluck said, “and in a similar area, of a relatively similar demographic of people. So I think it gives more power to some of the anal