Dear Sir
High levels of stress have been identified as an issue for doctors. Research shows that stressed doctors do not produce quality patient care and are more likely to make errors when treating patients. A particularly stressful part of medical training is the intern year, the first postgraduate year.
Data on the levels of stress were collected using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12 from interns at the beginning and end of their intern year (described as inexperienced and experienced interns, respectively). In addition, the experienced interns were asked to rate nine sources of stress using a four-point scale from ‘not a source of stress’ to a ‘major source of stress’. The sources were based upon the three categories of stress: situational, personal, and professional.
Responses were obtained from 56 interns commencing internship, and 34 interns at the end of internship. A total of 33.3% of the interns met the threshold for experiencing pathological levels of stress. A significant interaction was found between experience and gender (F(1,86) = 5.26, p<0.05). Experienced female interns reporting significantly lower levels of stress (5.6% reported pathological levels of stress) than inexperienced female interns (36.3% reported pathological levels of stress), experienced male interns (50.0% reported pathological levels of stress) and inexperienced male interns (39.1% reported pathological levels of stress). Experienced female interns also reported situational (t (35)=2.13; p<0.05) and personal (t (26.7)= 2.90, p<0.05) stressors to be significantly lower sources of stress than experienced male interns.
The levels of stress reported by the inexperienced interns were typical of that of other studies that have utilised the GHQ to measure stress in healthcare workers. However, the responses of the experienced interns were atypical of those reported in the literature. Consistent with the gender difference found in the GHQ scores, experienced male interns rated situational and personal stressors to be significantly higher source of stress than experienced female interns. Also, experienced male interns reported significantly more problems with managing work-life balance than experienced female interns. These findings indicate a need for a multi-centre prospective study of levels of stress in Irish interns and screening to identify stressors which may impact the ability to deliver optimal patient care.