Makhmudzhanova, Malika D.

Study objectives: to examine the severity of the personal social psychological attitudes of an individual in the need-motivational sphere, the Dark Triad traits, and the components of burnout, as well as the interrelationships between these features among physicians with different lengths of professional experience. 

Participants: 124 people between the ages of 20 and 62; 4 groups of respondents, differing in the length of their professional experience (student, less than 10 years, 11-20 years and over 20 years of work experience).

Materials: O.F. Potemkina’s “Social psychological attitudes in the need-motivational sphere of the person diagnostics test”, “The Dark Triad inventory” adapted by M.S. Egorova and M.A. Sitnikova and the “Maslach Burnout Inventory” adapted by N.E. Vodopyanova. 

Methods of data analysis: Cronbach’s alpha, descriptive statistics, crosstabulation (chi-squared test), one-way analysis of variance (with Tukey post-hoc test), one-sample Student t-test, Spearman’s correlation, comparison of correlations using Fisher’s z-transformation. 

Results: The altruistic attitude of practicing doctors is higher than that of students, but does not depend on the length of experience. A greater intention towards work is observed for participants with the medical work experience over 10 years. There is no established connection between work experience and the intensity of burnout in the respondents. Physicians with the average experience expressed weaker non-clinical narcissism and a psychopathy than students. The structure of the interrelationships between social psychological attitudes, the Dark Triad traits, and the components of burnout has specificity on the samples with various lengths of professional experience. We suggest interpretations for differences found in the severity and patterns of the connections between the indicators; they are summarized in the psychological portrait of a physician with a certain amount of experience.