Wisdom as a Factor in Preventing Emotional Burnout among Medical Professionals

The authors of this article examine wisdom as an internal resource in a sample of medical workers that can prevent the development of unhealthy deviations and preserve professional and life longevity. The aim of this work was to study the relationship between wisdom and emotional burnout in medical personnel. The article provides a theoretical analysis of the study of emotional burnout in medical workers, offers a description of the phenomenon of wisdom, and describes foreign empirical research on wisdom in the medical field. To collect data, the authors used The Level of Wisdom Questionnaire by N.N. Mehtikhanova and The Inventory for Diagnosing Emotional Burnout by V.V. Boyko. An empirical study conducted with 184 employees of the Tyumen Regional Clinical Hospital found signs of emotional burnout in 53.8% of the respondents. A comparison of groups of the surveyed medical workers having different levels of emotional burnout revealed significant differences in terms of wisdom. A correlation analysis showed a negative relationship between wisdom and emotional burnout of the medical personnel ( rs = -0.48, p < 0.001). A comparison between the groups of male and female respondents showed significant differences in terms of wisdom ( U = 1267.50, p = 0.016) and in terms of emotional burnout ( U = 1253.00, p = 0.013): wisdom was higher in the group of men, while emotional burnout was higher in the group of women. A pairwise comparison using the Mann - Whitney U -test revealed differences in wisdom between the groups of junior medical personnel and managers ( U = 31.00, p = 0.007) as well as between the groups of nurses and managers ( U = 326.00, p < 0.001). Wisdom in both cases was higher for the group of managers. In sum, results of this study found that wisdom helps medical personnel resist burnout syndrome. The formation of this quality will help medical workers to better preserve their mental health and professional longevity.