Academic burnout among medical students: respective importance of risk and protective factors

peer reviewedObjectives Prior research has found a high prevalence of academic burnout among medical students (33–55%), and medical education institutions have begun to address the issue. In this research, we hypothesized an increase in academic burnout during medical education, as supported by previous findings. The second purpose was to identify the significant predictors (among perceived stress, empathy, and perceived social support) of academic burnout and determine their respective importance. Study design The study design was a cross-sectional online and anonymous survey. Methods We recruited medical students (N = 342) from four education year-groups (i.e. Bachelor 1 and 3; Master 1 and 3). All participants voluntarily responded to our anonymous study and filled in four questionnaires assessing academic burnout, perceived stress, empathy, and perceived social support. We performed a multivariate analysis of variance on academic burnout and hierarchical regression analyses to determine the respective importance of risk and protective factors of academic burnout. Results We found that two academic burnout domains (i.e. emotional exhaustion and cynicism) significantly changed according to the study year. Cynicism increased as the academic years progressed (F(3,334) = 9.50; P < 0.001), and emotional exhaustion was highest at critical graduation moments during the academic curriculum (i.e. Bachelor 3 and Master 3; F(3,334) = 11.2; P < 0.001). Overall, women presented higher academic burnout traits than men (ᴧ = 0.963; F(3,332) = 4.26; P = 0.006), but univariate analysis revealed that they especially displayed higher emotional exhaustion (F(1,334) = 12.1; P < 0.001). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that perceived stress, cognitive empathy, and perceived social support were significant predictors of academic burnout. We found that perceived stress was a major predictor of academic burnout (from 10% to 28% of the part of variance) in comparison to other factors such as empathy (around 5%) and perceived social support (around 6%). Conclusions We found that emotional exhaustion and cynicism significantly changed over medical education and that women presented greater vulnerability than men for emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, risk and protective factors of academic burnout were identified: (1) perceived stress was a decisive risk factor; (2) paradoxically, cognitive empathy had a double edge nature (the two cognitive empathy domains had opposite effects); and (3) perceived social support was identified as a protective factor. Thus, a novel dimension of this research was to investigate and describe the importance of several predictors of academic burnout. The implications are crucial for education, and several recommendations are discussed to prevent academic burnout