Stress, burnout and health in the clinical period of dental education

Abstract

The study examined the extent of stress, burnout and health problems experienced by fourth and fifth year dental students from the three universities of Dresden, Freiburg and Bern. The objectives of the study were to: (i) identify frequent sources of stress and to report the prevalence rates of burnout and health problems in dental students, (ii) determine the rate of students suffering from severe burnout symptoms and (iii) identify stress factors related to the burnout symptoms of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. A total of 161 dental students from Dresden, Freiburg and Bern participated in the study. They completed the Psychosocial Stress Inventory, the Maslach Burnout Inventory and the Health Survey Questionnaire. Frequent sources of stress were limitation of leisure time, examination anxiety and the transition stress that was related to the adaptation to the demands of the clinical phase of dental education. Few differences existed between the students of the fourth and the fifth study year. Study-related stress was lowest in Bern and considerably higher in Dresden. Differences of mean levels of burnout symptoms were found only for the burnout dimension of emotional exhaustion. Students from Dresden and Freiburg were more emotionally exhausted than students from Bern, students from Dresden also reported more health problems than students from Bern or Freiburg. Ten per cent of the dental students suffered from severe emotional exhaustion, 17% complained about a severe lack of accomplishment and 28% reported severe depersonalization symptoms. Forty-four per cent of the variance of emotional exhaustion was explained by study-related factors such as lack of leisure time, examination anxiety and transition stress. The only predictor of depersonalization was a lack of social integration, accounting for 3% of the variance. A lack of social integration may be an indicator of low social competence which may cause difficulties in dealing with patients adequately and therefore result in depersonalization. The results indicate a need to identify the group of students who may have insufficient social skills for dealing adequately with the patients, and to train them accordingly.

El profesionalismo en la formación odontológica

“…42,43 Además del estrés y el agotamiento reportado en numerosos estudios sobre estudiantes de carreras de odontología en el mundo, [44][45][46] también se ha demostrado que estos reconocen tener conductas poco profesionales debido a la presión que ejerce la carrera, donde la atención al paciente se ve solo como un programa a cumplir, con requerimientos que hay que sortear de manera inflexible. Todos estos aspectos irían en contra de un ambiente de integridad propicio para generar conductas ligadas al profesionalismo.…”

“…42,43 In addition to the stress and fatigue reported in numerous studies on dental students worldwide, [44][45][46] it has been shown that they recognize behaving in a not very professional manner due to the pressures of the course of studies, where patient care is seen only as a program to be met, with requirements that need to be inflexibly sorted out. All these aspects go against a suitable environment of integrity to generate professional behaviors.…”

Burnout in dental students: effectiveness of different methods

“…Given that MBI-SS is the most used instrument worldwide for this Syndrome's screening, that its metric qualities have been considered adequate and stable in several studies [7][8][9][10][11]21 , and given the lack of a 'gold standard' for diagnosis of Burnout, we decided to consider the MBI as the 'gold standard' in this study, as previously recommended by Schutte et al 22 (2000).…”

“…According to the literature 6,[8][9][10][11] the assessment of the Burnout Syndrome has occurred in parallel with the evolution of its concept, being the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) the most used instrument in burnout assessment.…”

Perceived source of stress among dental college students in kancheepuram district

“…2 Stress is a significant threat that can result in physical or mental illness, and may have a strong negative effect on student's academics and their consecutive practice in dentistry. 3 stress can lead to anxiety, depression, decreased work efficiency and burn out in dental students 4 . Dentists suffer from especially high degrees of stress even when compared with other health professions [5][6] In the literature so many stress related studies for dental students available.…”