Objective To investigate the mediating role of medical coping strategies in the relationship between perceived social support and resilience among patients with occupational pneumoconiosis (hereinafter referred to as pneumoconiosis). Methods A total of 240 pneumoconiosis patients were selected as the study subjects using the convenience sampling method. The Perceived Social Support Scale, the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale and Medical Coping Strategies Questionnaire were used to evaluate their perceived social support, resilience and medical coping strategies. AMOS 26.0 software was used to construct the structural equation model. Results The average scores of perceived social support and resilience were (56.6±0.9) and (20.9±7.5), respectively. The scores for the dimensions of confrontation, avoidance and resignation of medical coping strategies were (20.2±3.6), (11.2±3.1) and (18.1±2.9), respectively. The score of resilience was positively correlated with the score of perceived social support, avoidance dimension and confrontation dimension of medical coping strategies (r=0.260, 0.176, 0.174, all P<0.01). It was negatively correlated with resignation coping (r=-0.292, P<0.01). The results of mediating effect test showed that the total effect of perceived social support on resilience was 0.252 [95% confidence interval (CI) was 0.056-0.448], which mainly affected the resilience by affecting the resignation coping (95%CI: -0.458 to -0.104), with the indirect effect value of 0.120, accounting for 47.6% of the total effect. Conclusion The resilience of pneumoconiosis patients is moderately low. Resignation coping in medical coping strategies plays a mediating role between perceived social support and resilience in pneumoconiosis patients.