Assessment of cognitive factors and their relationship with burnout syndrome at different levels of medical education

Abstract

Consecutive completion of specialist and residency training is an important stage in the development of a young physician. Therapeutic activity implies emotional intensity and a great number of factors, causing stress. The syndrome of emotional burnout is not only a result of neuropsychological stress, but also a consequence of uncontrolled stress. The aim of the research was to determine influence of thinking styles, types of thinking and creativity level on factors of cognitive appraisal as predictors of burnout syndrome development in higher education trainees (specialist and postgraduate training programmes). The search of predictors of a burnout syndrome was carried out for a sample of 330 medical students and 50 physicians of the control group. As a result of research it has been revealed that trainees as well as practitioners have a practical style of thinking; postgraduate trainees more often use the combined one, students, figurative; and physicians, sign type of thinking; higher parameters of creativity are marked in postgraduate trainees over physicians. In general, students on specialty and postgraduate training programmes have less difficulty with most of the cognitive assessment factors. The correlation analysis showed as follows: for students, there were direct links of medium strength between the sign type of thinking and “strong emotionsˮ, emotional detachment, and “future perspectiveˮ; for postgraduate trainees, there were direct and inverse links of very weak and weak strength, which could be neglected. However, further factor analysis is required in order to assess the influence of certain factor on the development of emotional burnout syndrome in medical trainees.