Background: Resilience has been described as the ability to adapt positively to adversity (Balme et al., 2015). With an increased awareness of the negative impact of burnout on patient and financial outcomes, there is heightened interest at an organizational level to develop resilience in health professionals.

Objectives: This session aims to present an evidence-based overview of resilience. With reference to the literature and findings from a research project, we outline controversies in conceptualization of resilience and evaluate the impact of therapeutic interventions targeting resilience (Joyce et al., 2018).

Methods: Narrative review of the literature on resilience, well-being and burnout in pre- and post-qualification settings. Evaluation of a bottom-up intervention to improve medical student resilience at Griffith University. The ‘student bundle’ intervention was developed following focus groups with staff and students and implemented in October 2018. Measures include resilience levels (CD-10) along with other indices of psychosocial functioning evaluated in a pre-test post-test manner.

Findings: We found caution should be used when utilizing the term ‘resilience’. Resilience can be seen as an oversimplistic panacea to solve all individual, educational and healthcare systems issues. Moreover, an over focus on resilience can potentially be misused as a plaster for covering up system flaws (Balme et al., 2015; Launer, 2015; Teodorczuk et al., 2017; Thistlethwaite, 2018). We will also be presenting preliminary findings from the evaluation of the student bundle.

Conclusions: Resilience is a hot topic and our findings shed light on development of educational well-being approaches aimed at preventing, promoting resilience and managing those with high levels of distress or burnout.