Abstract

PRIETO-MIRANDA, S.E.; LOPEZ-BENITEZ, W.  and  JIMENEZ-BERNARDINO, C.A.. Measurement of the quality of life in the residents doctors. Educ. méd. [online]. 2009, vol.12, n.3, pp.169-177. ISSN 1575-1813.

Introduction. During specialty studies, the resident doctor faces higher stress levels than the normal population, affecting him/her professionally and personally, hence we ask the question: do the residency studies modify the quality of life of the resident doctors who are taking the specialty? Subjects and methods. A descriptive, comparative study was carried out in February 2006 and in February 2007. We applied the PECVEC questionnaire central module to two resident's groups: the first one, initiating their medical specialty and one year later; and the second one, residents with more than one year of specialty studies. We included residents from medical and surgical specialties that agreed to participate in this study. All data was captured on SPSS v. 15 for analysis descriptive statistics were used for socio-demographic variables, the Student's t for comparing the quality of life among residents and specialty. The quality of life was classified as 'very good' between 3.1 and 4, 'good' between 2.1 and 3, 'regular' between 1.1 and 2 and 'bad' between 0 and 1. Results. 54 residents were included in the first group, from which only 45 completed the questionnaires at the beginning and one year later. We excluded 9 residents because they didn't complete the second questionnaire. In the second group, we included 62 second and third year residents that had more than a year of specialty studies. We found that after one year of specialty, the 6 evaluation scales showed a decline in the quality of life, falling from a level considered as 'very good' (3.18) to 'good' (2.73) p < 0.001. However, when we compared these results with the second group, this one didn't have a decline in the quality of life; the most affected parameters were: physical function and negative state of mind, with respect to gender both were affected in the same proportion. The most affected specialty was emergency medicine. Conclusion. During the residency studies, the resident's quality of life does in fact decline in the first year, but it keeps acceptable levels.

Keywords : Anxiety; Burnout; Depression; Medical residency; Quality of life.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )