Academic Burnout and Some Related Factors in Medical Students

Abstract

Background and Aim: Academic burnout is the feeling of inadequacy and mental fatigue induced by chronic stress in students lacking the necessary resources to carry out their duties and tasks assigned to them. This study aimed to determine academic burnout and some related factors in medical students of Islamic Azad University of Mashhad in 2015-2016. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 181 medical students in degrees of basic sciences, traineeship, and internship were selected by convenience sampling. The data collection instrument was the Persian version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory Student Survey and a checklist of demographic variables. The collected data were analyzed using SPSSv. 18 software, descriptive and analytical tests, such as t-test and ANOVA. Results: The mean total score of academic burnout was 34.69 ± 14.69. It was concluded that 23.2% of the subjects had a high level of burnout and 51.4% a moderate level. No significant relationship was found between age, marital status, having the second job, and the educational level without any of the dimensions and the total score of the burnout questionnaire (P>0.05). The mean of academic dissatisfaction was higher in men than in women (p = 0.01). With regard to the place of residence, the mean score of inefficiency in the student home was significantly higher than that of the dormitory (p = 0.04). Conclusion: The results of the study showed that a significant percentage of students suffer from academic burnout. In this study, female gender played a protective role in the dimension of academic dissatisfaction and living in a dormitory in the area of inefficiency.

Assessment of academic stress and its coping mechanisms among medical undergraduate students in a large Midwestern university

“…The other benefits like getting hygienic food, good living conditions and people to take care of one's health would have been best when family members were around. The observations in this study were however contradicting the observation of Mostafavian et al (2018) who observed that the academic stress was significantly more among those living at their houses compared to those at dormitories. As many as 60% participants regretted having wasted time set apart for their studies.…”

“…From these comparisons, it was obvious that academic stress was high among the participants in this study probably because of cultural factors. There was no association between academic stress and gender of participants in this study as also reported by Mostafavian et al (2018) and Zamroni et al (2018). However several other studies done among university students reported females to have significantly greater academic stress than males (Adiele et al 2018;Bamuhair et al 2015;Reddy et al 2018;Al-Sowygh et al 2013).…”

“…Place of residence was not associated with academic stress in this study and also in the study done among medical students in Iran by Mostafavian et al (2018).…”

“…Academic stress of moderate to severe level were reported among 83% participants in this study. In other studies done among medical students, academic stress was reported among 50% (Dyrbye et al 2008), 53% (Bamuhair et al 2015), 61% (Zamroni et al 2018) and 74.6% (Mostafavian et al 2018) participants. Academic stress among university students of other courses were reported among 48.8% (Reddy et al 2018), 70.7% (Sharififard et al 2014) and 73% (Adiele et al 2018) participants.…”

“…Permission to conduct the study was taken from the Dean. Sample size of 364 participants was calculated at 95% confidence intervals (CI), 90% power and the proportion of medical students with average level of academic stress taken as 51.4% based on the findings of Mostafavian et al (2018). A non-response rate of 10% was added to arrive at the final sample size which was calculated as 400 participants.…”