Introduction:
Burnout is common among medical students. Resilience is a protective and buffering response to overcome burnout and anxiety.
Aim:
To assess the levels of burnout and resilience among final-year medical students at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Benghazi.
Methods:
A cross-sectional study of a randomly selected sample of 199 final-year medical students. Burnout was assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory scale, and resilience was evaluated by the ten-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale.
Results:
The mean resilience score was 66.6%. Most students showed resilience levels that were ‘just above average’ in 47%, or ‘above average’ in 34%. Regarding burnout, 110 students (55.3%) reported high exhaustion, 80 (40.2%) reported depersonalization, and 113 (56.7%) reported low self-accomplishment. In contrast, high personal accomplishment was above average in 14 (30.4%) and average in 20 (43.5%) (P = 0.006).
Conclusion:
Nearly half of the studied group were at high risk of distress or had low resilience. Approximately half of them had exhaustion or low personal accomplishment, and more than one-third had high depersonalization. However, there was no significant association between resilience and gender, marital status, parenthood, working while studying, or having enough income.