The Potential Protective Effect of Hope on Students' Experience of Perceived Stress and Burnout during Medical School

A major problem facing today's physicians and medical students is burnout. Christina Maslach and fellow researchers have described burnout as a product of chronic stress and a lack of protective psychological factors like hope. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between hope, stress, and burnout among medical students.

This study involved an online survey of 329 first- through fourth-year allopathic and osteopathic medical students. Validated psychometric scales were used to measure the primary variables. We conducted Pearson correlation, hierarchical regression, and mediation analyses to test the relationships between hope, stress, and burnout and to determine whether hope directly impacts stress and burnout.

We found significant correlations between hope, stress, and burnout. Hierarchical regression revealed that hope accounted for significant variance in burnout over and above psychological stress and that stress and hope together accounted for 48% of this variance. We discovered that hope may be partially mediating the relationship between stress and burnout.

Hope may play a significant protective role in the stress-burnout relationship in the context of medical students: higher levels of hope are associated with lower levels of stress and burnout. Our study supports the idea of using hope-based interventions in medical student populations and investing more resources into this area of research.