Application of the Pennsylvania resilience training program on medical students

• This study was the first attempt to apply the PRP to Chinese medical students.
• PRP could change the cognition style of individuals to enhance resilience.
• PRP could improve the resilience and positive emotions of medical students.
• PRP should be modified to better adapt to Chinese medical students.

This study explored the effects of the Penn Resilience Program (PRP) on the positive and negative emotions, emotion regulation style, and resilience among Chinese medical students. Resilience, positive and negative emotions, and emotional regulation styles scores were compared before and after training through a questionnaire survey. (1) The resilience, positive emotion, and cognitive appraisal scores of the low-resilience experimental group increased significantly after training (P < .05), whereas their negative emotion and expression suppression scores were significantly decreased (P < .05). The positive emotion scores of the high-resilience experimental group increased significantly after training (P < .05), whereas its total scores for negative emotion and expression suppression decreased significantly (P < .05). (2) No significant changes were found in the resilience, positive emotion, negative emotion, cognitive appraisal, and expression suppression scores of the control group (P > .05). PRP could improve the level of resilience and positive emotion for medical students and help them adopt a positive emotion regulation style when facing difficult situations. Our findings laid the groundwork for resilience interventions in the future.