Conhecer para abordar: resiliência de acadêmicos de odontologia na pandemia COVID-19

Abstract

In psychology, the concept of resilience is described as an emotional competence that allows facing and dealing with life's difficulties without developing diseases, acquiring and developing new potentialities. Obtaining resilience involves skills of adaptation, interaction, overcoming and re-signification of lived experiences, where individual characteristics must be considered. However, such individual characteristics are in interaction and often depend on the context inserted (family, social and economic resources). The objective of the study was to describe the resilience levels of undergraduate healthcare students at a public higher education institution and to determine whether these are related to demographic factors, quality of life, and academic engagement with extracurricular activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sociodemographic questionnaires, WHOQOL-BREF on quality of life and the Brazilian Resilience Scale (RS-14) were applied to undergraduate students in Dentistry at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. In the analysis phase, the respondents were separated into two groups: i) i) who performed extracurricular activity (CA), and ii) who did not perform or did not maintain extracurricular activity during the pandemic (SA). Quality of life scores were concentrated in the physical, psychological, social relationships and environment domains, while those related to resilience were described in self-sufficiency, meaning, perseverance, equanimity and existential loneliness. Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) was performed to infer extracurricular activity on levels of quality of life and resilience. The study evaluated 93 students, of whom 55 belonged to the group with extracurricular activity (CA) and 38 without extracurricular activity (SA) during the pandemic. For both groups, the scores indicated good quality of life indices, especially in the physical and social relationships domains, as well as high levels of resilience for most of the sample. Regarding the CCA, it was possible to determine a single pair of canonical variables (U and V), which was statistically significant, with a Wilks λ of 0.17457, F (75, 353.87) = 2.07442, p < 0.001. The correlation presented by these canonical pairs was approximately 77%, directly related to increases in resilience coefficients and quality of life, with a direct relationship to the increases in coefficients resilience and quality of life. It was concluded that the levels of resilience and quality of life were not statistically different in students who practiced extracurricular activities, therefore, both groups showed good levels of resilience and quality of life during the COVID-19 pandemic.