Psychological Status among Post Graduate Residents in Tertiary Level
ABSTRACT
Background: Medical education is highly stressful, stepping into a new environment, huge course syllabus which has to be mastered in a short period of time besides continuous assessments, examinations and other social and personal issues makes medical student prone to develop negative emotional symptoms.
Objective: This study is an attempt to assess the burnout, level of stress, level of anxiety,level of depression and to assess type of personality among the medical students in a tertiary hospital.
Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted on 198medical students at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) in Kathmandu. Socio- Demographic Performa, The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale - 21 Items (DASS-21), Burnout Rating Scale and Big Five Inventory (BFI) were the tools used.
Results:Among the participants, more than half (52%) had severe level of burnout; i.e.75th percentile on burnout scale. The study findings show that burnout had inverse relationship with personal accomplishment factor and was more among residents from surgical department. High burnout score was associated more with dominant personality type of neuroticism, followed by openness type. The present study found that 34.8 % ofthe participants had significant level of stress and depression, whereas 32.8% reported anxiety of mild to extreme level.It was found that anxiety increases significantly with increase in intake of alcohol. For personality type, majority had dominant personality type of openness (67.5%), followed by conscientiousness (16.2%), agreeableness (10.1%), extroversion (4%) and neuroticism (2.5%).
Conclusion:Overall findings suggest that almost one third medical students reported significant symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression while half of them reported significant problem of burnout.
Key-words: Anxiety,Burnout, Depression, Personality, Stress
Author: Rampukar Sah