Lexi Siefke, Hope College

Faculty Mentor(s)

Dr. Aaron Franzen, Sociology & Social Work

Document Type

Poster

Event Date

4-12-2024

Abstract

Poor mental health has been shown in pre-medical students starting in undergraduate and persisting throughout their careers (Fang et al. 2010). Further, mental health has also been associated with burnout in medical student populations and boredom in general populations, making it difficult to distinguish burnout and boredom from one another. Research has not shown how mental health, boredom, and burnout relate to and are different from one another in undergraduate students. Our data include 510 pre-health and nursing students in three separate cohorts, each surveyed over the course of four years. To measure mental health, students were asked how many days in the past 30 days they had poor mental health. To determine a student's boredom, we use the boredom proneness scale (Struk et al. 2017) and burnout was measured with the short form (West et al. 2009). The results showed that there was a significant correlation between mental health and burnout as well as mental health and boredom. However, there was not a correlation between burnout and boredom. These results were not affected by gender or students being first generation college students. Although both burnout and boredom are related to worse mental health, the two are not related to one another, possibly indicating that they influence mental health via distinct pathways. Future research could focus on whether boredom is related to not being challenged enough, whereas a student who is unable to sustain the academic challenges would be more prone to burnout.

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