Sagar Shrikant Chiddarwar1, Deepika Abhainath Singh2
BACKGROUND
Medical students are exposed to various stressful conditions in their journey towards becoming a successful doctor leading to burnout. Adoption of faulty coping mechanisms increases the risk further. Spirituality as a way of coping can help to reduce burnout in these students.
MATERIALS & METHODS
We decided to conduct a study with aims to assess the prevalence of burnout in medical students, to study their socio-demographic profile and to understand the role of spirituality as a way of coping from burnout. Ethics Committee approval was obtained. It was a cross-sectional study wherein random 100 medical students studying in MBBS were selected. A semi-structured questionnaire to obtain details about socio- demographic profile, Burnout Measure-Short Version Scale and Spiritual attitude inventory were administered.
RESULTS
The present study shows prevalence of burnout as 64%. According to socio-demographic profile, there was no association of burnout with age. Burnout was significantly more in females (n=48; 75%), hostellers (n=51; 79.69%) and students studying in final year (n=22; 34.37%) or in internship (n=28; 43.75%). There was no significant difference in burnout and non-burnout Group with respect to rural or urban background and socioeconomic class.
On comparing spirituality, it was found that students without burnout were more spiritual when compared to students with burnout, also severity of burnout was negatively correlated with spirituality in all four domains i.e religious spiritual practice, negative religious coping, sense of purpose/connection and sense of hope/control. Thus spirituality as a way of coping acts as a buffer and prevents from burnout.
