The Relationship between Burnout and Sense of School Belonging among the Resident Physicians in the Standardization Training in China

ABSTRACT

Background

As an important part in medical training in graduate school, 33-month medical residency training could be a stressful period inducing burnout (i.e. emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment). Despite that existing literature has found that sense of belonging may have merits for residents’ well-being, it has remained unclear how sense of school belonging affects burnout and the potential moderators. To address this question, a cross-sectional survey has been conducted among the residents of the physicians standardized residency training program in China.

Methods

Seven hundred (N = 700) resident physicians from different majors (i.e. clinical medicine, clinical Stomatology, and Chinese medicine) and grades have participated in the survey. Resident’s sense of school belonging was assessed with the psychological sense of school membership scale (PSSM, mean = 45.12, SD = 11.14). Burnout was measured by the 22-item Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI-HSS, mean = 65.80, SD = 15.89), including three subscales of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment.

Results

The results showed that over 80% of the residents reported moderate or high level of emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment during residency training. Meanwhile, higher level of sense of school belonging was associated with lower overall burnout (B = −0.722, p < 0.001), less emotional exhaustion, reduced depersonalization, and higher personal accomplishment. In particular, the benefits of sense of belonging seem more pronounced among female and those at earlier stage of residency. No interaction effect was found between sense of belonging and major, while those from Chinese medicine reported lower scores in overall burnout and the three dimensions.

Conclusions

Burnout was a prevalent issue among the resident physicians, and our findings confirmed the protective effects of sense of school belonging against burnout. Therefore, support service should be developed to cultivate resident’s sense of school belonging and social connections, particularly for female and those at earlier stage of residency.

KEYWORDS:

• Sense of school belonging
• burnout
• resident physicians
• vocational training
• graduate medical education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the -2022 Project of online course construction and teaching for national medical and pharmaceutical postgraduates [BYXC2022-02-0310]; 2020 Guangdong Province degree and graduate education reform project [2020JGXM012]; 2023 Jinan university ”Golden course” projects [JG2024065]; Jinan University’s 19th Batch of “Innovation Project” in Educational Technology.