Burnout and study engagement among medical students at Sun Yat-sen University, China

Abstract

This study aims to investigate burnout and study engagement among medical students at Sun Yat-sen University, China.A cross-sectional survey was conducted among undergraduate medical students of Sun Yat-sen University, China. A total of 453 undergraduate students completed a self-administered, structured questionnaire between January and February, 2016. Burnout and study engagement were measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Student Survey (MBI-SS) and the UTRECHT Work Engagement Scale-Students (UWES-S), respectively. Subjects who scored high in emotional exhaustion subscale, high in cynicism subscale, and low in professional efficacy subscale simultaneously were graded as having high risk of burnout. Independent sample t tests and chi-square tests were used to compare the differences in burnout and work engagement between genders, majors, and grade levels.The means (standard deviations) of the MBI-SS subscales were 3.42 (1.45) for emotional exhaustion, 2.34 (1.64) for cynicism, and 3.04 (1.30) for professional efficacy. The means (standard deviations) of the UWES-S subscales were 3.13 (1.49) for vigor, 3.44 (1.47) for dedication and 3.00 (1.51) for absorption. Approximately 1 in 11 students experienced a high risk of burnout. There were no statistically significant gender differences in burnout and study engagement. There were also no statistically significant differences in burnout and study engagement subscales according to student major. Students in higher grades displayed increased burnout risk, higher mean burnout subscale score of cynicism, lower mean burnout subscale score of professional efficacy, and decreased mean study engagement subscale scores of dedication and absorption. There were strong correlations within study engagement subscales.Chinese medical students in this university experience a high level of burnout. Students at higher-grade level experience more burnout and decreased study engagement compared with students in lower level.

Exploring burnout and depression of Thai medical students: the psychometric properties of the Maslach burnout inventory

“…In China, Liu and colleagues 27 showed an association between higher grades and increased burnout risk, which was in contrast to this study. We speculate that in Thai culture, GPA may be important for professional identity formation.…”

The Effect of Admission Year and Effort-Reward Imbalance Model on Engagement

“…It could be argued that admission year might be interpreted as year in school because admission year and year in school had high correlation in our data. In fact, year in school was associated with engagement in other previous studies (Babenko et al, 2018;Liu et al, 2018). When we used year in school as an explanatory variable in the other categorical regression model instead of admission year, the importance value of admission year (13.4%) was much larger than that of year in school (3.2%) (Table 4).…”

“…Engagement, a positive and rewarding psychological state in a learning process (Liu et al, 2018), is known as a salient factor in medical students' self-directed and effective learning (Richards, Sweet, & Billett, 2013). While engagement is known to be related to academic achievement (Gómez et al, 2015;Hansen, D'Urso, & Fracchia, 2016) and personal performance (Hansen et al, 2016), research on engagement in the field of medical education has not been widely conducted (Siyami, Akbari, & Ayati, 2014).…”

“…In addition, it has been found that engagement has significant relationships with competence, autonomy, self-compassion, and mastery approach goals (Babenko, Mosewich, Abraham, & Lai, 2018). For demographic variables, one study (Liu et al, 2018) has found no significant sex difference. However, two previous studies (Babenko et al, 2018;Siyami et al, 2014) have shown that engagement of female students is higher than that of male students.…”

“…However, two previous studies (Babenko et al, 2018;Siyami et al, 2014) have shown that engagement of female students is higher than that of male students. Also, students in lower year in school reported greater engagement than those in higher year in school (Babenko et al, 2018;Liu et al, 2018). Considering that demographic variables play a considerable role in elucidating positive psychological constructs (Singh, Junnarkar, & Kaur, 2016), their relationship with engagement of medical students needs to be studied due to the lack of research.…”