An Investigation into the Prevalence and Effects of Burnout among Medical Students in Guyana
Objectives
To determine the rate of burnout among medical students ofGuyana and to identify the causes and effects of burnout among thosemedical students affected.
Method
This cross-sectional, quantitative study surveyed238 medical students from all five medical schools in Guyana. TheBurnout Inventory Student Survey (MBI-SS) score was used to determinethe risk of burnout among the surveyed students. A piloted, online, denovo questionnaire was used to evaluate the variables recorded on thequestionnaire including age, gender, year of study, employment status,causes, effects of burnout inter alia. All quantitative data were analyzedusing SPSS v. 26.0 with the chi square and independent samples t-testbeing used to assess the association between variables. (p=0.05)
Results
Data on 238 medical students were analysed (F=152, M=86),51.3% of surveyed medical students showed signs of high burnout.(M=48.3%, F=61.8%, p<0.000, OR=3.4). While there was no significantdifference between burnout rates of students in the 1st and 5th years(p=0.07), the 5th years were 3.7 times more at risk for burnout than theirfirst years. Majority of the respondents attributed the cause of burnout to’poorly designed curriculum’ and ‘high tuition fees.’ Consequently, 36.1%of the respondents have ‘thoughts of suicide’, 25.4% engage in’safe/unsafe sexual gratifications’, and others use alcohol/ ‘hard’ drugs tocope with burnout.
Conclusion
Medical students are at a high risk of burnout. Medicalschools need to design programmes to address the mental health of itspopulace and reduce the prevalence and effects of burnout.