Stress and Emotional Burnout Among Medical Students

To prevent emotional burnout, it is essential to have awareness of present-day stress factors in education. Therefore, the study is aimed at determining the characteristics of stress factors and emotional burnout as well as their correlation in the education process of medical students at the present stage of lifting Covid restrictions. A conducted online cross-sectional study analyzed the data obtained from 143 freshman, sophomore, junior and senior medical students, who voluntarily took part in it. Research methods comprise theoretical analysis, testing, questionnaire method, statistical method; testing methods include the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the Test for Educational Stress elaborated by Yu.V. Shcherbatykh, the Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient. The research revealed similarities and differences between stress factors, leading to emotional burnout, and the year of study. Emotional burnout among medical students of all grades is related to strict university lecturers, incomprehensible and boring textbooks, unwillingness to study, disappointment in the profession, irregular meals, fear of the future. Anxiety due to COVID-19, pandemic restrictions and the use of distance learning technologies are associated with emotional burnout among freshman students; emotional exhaustion among senior students is connected with general anxiety due to the pandemic. The level of emotional burnout was higher among sophomore and junior students, indicating a connection between emotional burnout and learning process. Based on the data obtained, special support programs should be developed to maintain the educational process of students.