Relationship between medical students’ negative perceptions of colleagues’ work–life and burn-out during clerkships: a longitudinal observational cohort study

OBJECTIVE: Because work and educational environments are closely related and can affect each other, this study examined whether medical students’ negative perceptions of their colleagues’ work–life balance (NWLB) during their clinical rotations would be related to burn-out in clerkships and investigated the effect of students’ gender on this relationship. DESIGN: A longitudinal, prospective 2-year cohort study conducted between September 2013 and April 2015. SETTING: Medical students from a university school of medicine in Taiwan. PARTICIPANTS: One voluntary cohort of undergraduate medical students in clerkships was invited to participate. Among 190 medical students recruited in September 2013, a total of 124 students provided written informed consent. Participants were free to decide whether to complete each survey; therefore, varying numbers of responses were obtained during the study period. Those who responded to our survey for more than 6 months were included in our analyses. Overall, 2128 responses from 94 medical students were analysed, with each student providing an average of 23 responses for 2 years. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: Burn-out was measured using the Professional Quality of Life Scale. RESULTS: Our study found that a strong NWLB was related to high burn-out levels among medical students during their clerkships (p<0.001). However, the gender of the student had no effect on this relationship (p>0.05). In addition, our study indicated that medical students living with a companion had decreased burn-out levels than did those living alone during their clerkships. CONCLUSIONS: The significance of policies promoting employee work–life balance should be emphasised because of the potential for social contagion effects on medical students. Clerkship trainees might be vulnerable to such negative contagion effects during the transition to their early clinical workplace training and may, therefore, require advanced socialisation and mentoring.