Abstract
Medical school students often experience emotional difficulties when handling the challenges of their formation, occasionally leading to burnout. In this study, we measured the prevalence of burnout and its relationships with perceived stress, perceived social support, and alexithymia in medical students from the largest academic medical community in Romania. A cross-sectional survey was administered to a randomized sample of 299 preclinical medical students at the University of Medicine in Bucharest. Participants completed four standardized questionnaires. In addition to the assessment of burnout prevalence, stepwise backward regression was used to establish which variables had the highest correlation to burnout components. Further, t-tests were run to assess gender-related differences. Overall, burnout prevalence was 15.05%. Perceived stress was found to be the strongest predictor of emotional exhaustion and lack of accomplishment, while the strongest predictors of depersonalization were low perceived social support (in women) and alexithymia (in men). Women appear to be more vulnerable to two of the components of burnout (emotional exhaustion and low personal accomplishment) and associate higher perceived stress and alexithymia. These results suggest that interventions addressing academic burnout could benefit from being gender-specific, with focus on key elements, such as perceived stress and alexithymia.
Highlights
Medical education is considered to be one of the most demanding fields of specialized training, in terms of program length and emotional requirements [1,2], during the preclinical years [3,4]
We considered the criteria of burnout to be met if the participants had a score above 30 on the emotional exhaustion (EE) scale and if at least one of the scores of the other two dimensions were above the recommended cut-off points (DP: 11; lack of personal accomplishment (LPA): 35)
This study examined the prevalence of burnout and its relationships to alexithymia, perceived stress, and perceived social support among Romanian undergraduate medical students
Summary
Medical education is considered to be one of the most demanding fields of specialized training, in terms of program length and emotional requirements [1,2], during the preclinical years [3,4]. A significant outcome of the cumulative distress experienced throughout the academic track [1,9] is represented by the burnout syndrome, defined as the presence of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and impaired personal accomplishment, following repeated exposure to workplace stressors [10,11]. Even though the prevalence of burnout ranges widely [8,12,13,14,15], it is consistently referred to as a worrisome issue, because of its consequences [15,16,17]. Numerous studies suggest that the high prevalence of burnout in physicians may often originate in medical school [3,13,14,15,19,21,22,23], including during the preclinical years [24,25]
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