Burnout in postgraduate medical students during COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction: Medical profession has been associated with high level of burnout leading to severe psychological problems among the medical students. With the emerging demand of health care facilities during a pandemic, medical students do face high exhaustion which may result in dissatisfaction in life. Aims and Objectives: To assess the level of burnout, the level of satisfaction and the level of distress in post graduate medical students in relation to covid 19 work load. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in s tertiary health care centre. A total of 100 post graduate medical students who actively participated in covid 19 duty were recruited for the study. A standardized and structured questionnaire for Oldenburg Inventory scale (OLBI-S), the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) were used to briefly assess the burnout level, life satisfaction and psychological distress respectively among the participants. A Self semi-structured proforma for socio-demographic details was given to study subjects to fill up. Statistical Analysis: Both qualitative and quantitative measures of data were calculated. Statistical significance was kept at p-value of <0.05 using Fisher's t-test and Chi-square test wherever applicable. Analysis of data was done by using SPSS version 21. Results: Majority (85%) of the participants reported low burnout of which 62.3% (n=53) were male and 37.6% (n=32) were female. The level of exhaustion when compared with gender was found to be statistically significant (p-value=0.037). Most of the participants (n=55) reported to be slightly satisfied with their life of which 67% (n=37) were male and 32.7% (n=18) were female. Most of the participants(n=63) reported to be psychologically well while 34 of them reported mild distress of which 29 were male and 5 of them were female. The level of psychological distress when compared with gender was found to be statistically significant (p-value=0.002). No positive correlation was found between burnout level and level of satisfaction, neither between burnout level and level of psychological distress. Conclusion: Our study found an overall low burnout, low psychological distress and low level of dissatisfaction with life in the postgraduate medical students working in covid 19 pandemic.