# Positive childhood experiences and burnout among medical students: the role of adaptive emotion regulation as a mediator

## TL;DR

Positive childhood experiences may protect medical students from burnout by helping them regulate emotions effectively.

## Contribution

This study identifies adaptive emotion regulation as a mediator linking positive childhood experiences and reduced burnout in medical students.

## Key findings

- Adaptive emotion regulation partially mediates the relationship between positive childhood experiences and burnout.
- Approximately 67% of the total effect of positive childhood experiences on burnout is explained by adaptive emotion regulation.
- Targeted interventions to improve emotion regulation could help prevent burnout in medical students.

## Abstract

Burnout is a state of chronic exhaustion caused by excessive stress. Medical trainees are highly vulnerable to burnout, which can negatively affect their well-being. Empirical evidence from Bethell et al. demonstrates that positive childhood experiences reduce adult depression and anxiety, while Gross’s process model suggests that adaptive emotion regulation strategies buffer against stress-related outcomes. Building upon these frameworks, positive childhood experiences (PCE) and adaptive (positive) emotion regulation (ER) are thought to be protective against burnout, but the mechanisms which mediate these effects are poorly understood. This study aimed to explore whether adaptive ER mediates the relationship between PCE and burnout among medical students. Participants completed well-established and validated measurements of PCEs (Benevolent Childhood Experiences scale), adaptive ER (Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire short version), and burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory). Our results indicate that adaptive ER mediates the relationship between PCEs and burnout, with a moderate indirect effect of PCEs on burnout (β = −0.31, accounting for approximately 67% of the total effect). These findings suggest that targeted intervention programs aiming to strengthen adaptive ER could help protect medical students against burnout. However, limitations include the cross-sectional design precluding casual inference, reliance on self-reported data, and recruitment from a single institution with predominantly female participants, which may limit generalizability to other medical schools.