Student response to burnout in medical students
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Neuropsychiatr https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-020-00362-w
Student response to burnout in medical students Simran Bedi
Received: 15 September 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, ein Teil von Springer Nature 2020
Dear Editor, As a final year medical student studying at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, I found the article “Burnout in medical students” authored by Thun-Hohenstein et al. [1] to be of great interest. The main limitations identified by the paper were the design of the study and the lack of psychological and personal data and their correlation to student burn out relates. I would therefore like to share my perspective on the issue. It has been well reported in literature that burn out syndrome has multiple aetiologies with burnout rates among medical students being reported as high as 50% in the past 10 years alone [2]. Thun-Hohenstein et al. [1] ought to be applauded for their research as they have delved into a crucial area which is not traditionally located in medical education literature. From personal experience, there are psychological correlations between certain personality traits and levels of burn out. These personal characteristics include extroversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism. These observations are ricocheted by a longitudinal study that was run over a decade period on medical school students which concluded that personality attributes correlate and have a causative effect on stress, satisfaction and burnout during physician years [3]. Therefore, future studies may benefit from including personality questionnaires in order to ascertain the correlation between psychosocial factors and burnout. Certain screening tools can be used to identify students with these particular personality traits whom are statistically at a higher risk of burn out. It can be S. Bedi () Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK [email protected]
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recommended that medical schools use the Revised NEO Personality Inventory during the initial semester at medical school in order to identify such students [4]. Subsequently, the Maslach Burnout Inventory can then be used at the end of each academic year to determine actual rates of burnout [5]. The data accumulated from these questionnaire inventories would allow for focussed and tailored streams of psychosocial training in order to build protective factors and improve coping strategies in order to prevent occurrence of burnout. Furthermore, the causal relationship of the variables in this study may better be explored using longitudinal studies, alongside undertaking further studies across other medical schools. This may be a better method to determine the generalizability of future results. With the aforementioned proposals, future research in this area could have a greater impact and initiate the shift towards the implementation psychological screening measures to reduce overall rates of burnout in medical schools across the glo
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