Everyone Gets Bored Sometimes: Effects of Boredom and Burnout in a Longitudinal Study on Pre Health Undergraduate Students

For some time now, medical education research has documented increased levels of undesirable outcomes as a byproduct of professionalization, such as decreased mental health and increased burnout. We introduce to this literature the concept of boredom proneness that taps into students' adaptation to a sense of the flow of time and outline how this affects their health throughout undergraduate. Trait measures of boredom tap into not merely a momentary discomfort with a context or flow of time, but a deeper existential challenge that indicates a possibly socially-induced discordance with a self in time. Additionally, a challenge of past research is it is often cross-sectional, complicating understanding changes over time. This study uses a unique data set that follows three consecutive cohorts of pre health undergraduate students at a small liberal arts college throughout all four years of undergrad (n=532). We use time-ordered structural equation models to show how burnout, mental health, overall health, social support, and a novel measure of boredom proneness change throughout time. We find a high degree of stability in these measures throughout time. Importantly, we find that boredom is a potent predictor of decreased health and is a more potent predictor of worse mental health than the same measure from prior waves. We discuss implications this may have as a background factor influencing other well known challenges to professional collaboration and patient care, such as shifts in empathy, burnout, and humility.