Bringing Complexity thinking to Curriculum Development: Implications for Faculty and Medical Student Stress and Resilience

This chapter presents an account of a curricular "experiment" at McMaster University in Canada that set out to enhance "resilience" for medical students, some theoretical underpinnings drawn from complexity sciences, and some observations that are intended to broaden our concept of what we think we are talking about when we consider issues of stress and resilience in the work of physicians and how this impacts medical education. This account draws upon thinking from recent social and complexity sciences to illustrate what other authors in this book will be emphasizing: that issues of stress, resilience, and professionalization are multifactorial and multidimensional. The English language tends to put things at rest: "stress" and "resilience" are often pointed to as static concepts to be looked at, explored, and planned for. If we think of the matters at hand in terms of processes, not nouns or objects, the question becomes more about the quality of our participating. What if "stress" and "resilience" were "verbs" or actions, showing themselves in everyday acts of relating? Perhaps then, learning the arts and skills of resilience would need to focus more on everyday interactions. In this chapter, we report on our experience over several years of trying to plan a new curriculum which had, among other things, the mandate to promote student self-care. Themes of both stress and resilience emerged for all involved: planners, teachers, and students. We invite you to consider how these themes relate to your own educational setting.